The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Two

Albinkirk

The company that rode into Albinkirk was sober, watchful, and grief-stricken. The company flags were furled, and the lead wagon held corpses-any observer could see as much.

Ser John Crayford watched them come through the gate and rode immediately to the head of the column, instead of reviewing and saluting the entire company.

The young sprig of last year was older. Much older. He wore a small pointed beard and his eyes were tired. His face was an expressionless mask of fatigue and unexpressed grief.

“How can I help?” Ser John asked.

Ser Gabriel took his offered hand. “Today, barracks. Tomorrow…” His eyes flickered aside. “Tomorrow, a priest you like and a church. We have a dozen dead.” His eyes held grief-actual grief.

Welcome to growing up, laddie, Ser John thought. But he had kindness in him, too, and in fifty heartbeats his squire was riding for the bishop while his valet led the outriders to the barracks. The castle was still half-empty. With the company at a little over a third of its strength, he could put every man and woman in a bed, or at least on a straw pallet.

Ser John got the tale of the ambush from Kit Foliak, who he knew from his younger days, as the tired squires and pages began to sort the packs and the leather bags and the wagons and the horses in the citadel’s courtyard, paved with uneven stones five centuries old.

When he’d seen to the company’s basic comforts, he went with Ser Ricar Fitzalan-a thinner and fitter version of the King’s captain-into his hall and sent a boy for the Red Knight. The man came with his famous brother, and sat in a tall chair piled with cushions while his valet raised one of his legs, elevated it, and put it on a stool. The slip of a girl was quick, efficient, and apparently unconcerned by her master’s vague nastiness.

“Stop that-fuck, you’re hurting me,” the captain spat. “Damn it, girl. Stop fussing. No, I do not want water. Get your hands off me.”

Nell ignored him resolutely, following Mag’s orders.

Ser Gabriel was out of his harness, and his fine velvet arming coat was filthy.

The man seemed to come to himself. He sighed and looked at Ser John.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I’m not myself.”

Ser Gavin shrugged and accepted a cup of wine. “You seem exactly like yourself to me,” he said. “I’m not sure we’ve been introduced. I’m Ser Gavin Muriens. This is my brother, Ser Gabriel.”

Ser John rose and bowed. “Ser John Crayford. I know your brother, from the siege and all that followed.” He looked at the surly captain. “And for lifting my two best men-at-arms when he went past last time.”

Ser Ricar laughed aloud. “Well, I don’t know either of you, but I’m Ser Ricar Fitzalan. The old king’s bastard. And captain of the bodyguard.”

Ser Gavin bowed. “I saw you after Lissen Carak. Indeed, we were within a few beds in the dispensary of the sisters.”

Ser Ricar bowed from his seat. “Of course. My apologies.”

“Hah! One linen-wrapped body looks much like the rest,” Gavin said. “But Sister Amicia pointed you out.”

Ser John leaned forward. “Kit Foliak says you were ambushed-beat the ambush-and that a certain former king’s sorcerer tried to clinch the bargain.”

Gabriel played with his untrimmed beard. “Master Foliak is very free with his information. But yes.”

Ser John shook his head. “I mean no harm and, by God, sirs, I believe we are of the same metal. If there need be factions, surely we are all King’s men? And all of us foes of Plangere and his ilk.”

Gabriel’s smile was not friendly. But he sighed-a long exhalation. He looked at his brother, who twitched an eyebrow.

“Ser John, I’m a churl today. I’m not at my best, and I beg your pardon.” He bowed slightly in his chair.

Ser John reflected the bow exactly.

Ser Gabriel looked out the window at the spring rain. They’d lost a day crossing the last stream before Albinkirk, the north branch of the West Kanatha. It was flooded to a roaring torrent by the spring melt. It had taken too long for tired men to get the wagons across.

The captain’s tongue had been too active and too biting.

He regretted it. He stared out the window and no one spoke. Finally he said, “I lost too many men. And a-a friend.”

Ser John thought ahhh.

Less intuitive, or simply blunter, Ser Ricar held out his cup for more wine and asked, “What hit you?”

Ser Gavin’s voice was not much less strained than his brother’s. “Four wyverns,” he said. “Twenty daemons and a shaman. Something we’ve never seen before.” Gavin gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “We brought two corpses to show you. We call them imps.” He looked away. “We lost three men to them.”

Ser John shook his head. “I am sorry for your losses, Captain. And sorry you were attacked; I try to patrol my lands. Where were you?”

“The Hole,” Ser Gabriel said. “Not in any way your fault.”

Ser Ricar and Ser John exchanged a look. “So far south and east!” Ser Ricar said.

“Thorn’s coming,” Gabriel said, and the name was like a curse. “You know, until now, I have not taken him seriously. Like a fool. Like a fool. I gave him a year to recover, and now look.” Gabriel’s face wore the same anger that the goodwife had worn. “He’s back.”

“Brother-” Gavin said with a cautioning hand.

Gabriel shook it off. “You have called a council,” he said to Ser John. “I’d like to attend with my brother. With Tom Lachlan, who is now the Drover.”

Ser John nodded. “We’d be proud to have you, sir knight. The Abbess will be here, and most of our northern gentry will be here or be represented.”

“I can represent the Emperor,” Gabriel said.

Ser John’s eyebrows shot up, but he had heard the rumours.

“And as Duke of Thrake, I think I deserve a seat at the table,” he added.

“Or the whole table,” Ser Gavin muttered.

Ser John frowned. “Well-you gentlemen will dominate my council, then, with your mother. She’s expected tomorrow from Ticondaga.”

A difficult silence fell.

Ser John wondered what he’d said.

Finally, Ser Gabriel gave a laugh that had a sob in it. “Am I safe in assuming that the Abbess will bring Sister Amicia?” he asked.

Ser John smiled. “Of course. She’s essential to our defences.”

Gabriel nodded. “Perfect,” he said. He held out his cup. “I’ll need some more wine.”

An hour later, Ser Gavin had his brother in a bed, in a clean nightshirt, and lightly drunken on wine and lots of water. “Brother,” he said.

Gabriel smiled ruefully. “I’m well. Well enough. You go.”

Gavin shook his head. “I’ll stay.”

Gabriel raised his head. “I’m not a fucking weakling, brother. Trust me, I’ll weather this. And you’ve waited almost a year to see her. Go! At the very least, she needs to know that Mater might be here, and what that will mean.”

“Sweet Christ, I hadn’t even thought-” Gavin smacked his head. “Oh, dear God.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel said. “You must go. And I will stay here, and play the role. Come back-but don’t despair. The worst is over.”

Gavin looked at his brother with too much understanding. “No, it isn’t.”

Gabriel frowned. “I didn’t know how much I liked him,” he said. “I didn’t…”

Gavin sighed. “I did. Ever since Kaitlin’s wedding. He was one of us as much as if he’d ridden with us for years. Christ, listen to me. I’ve only ridden with you a year.”

“I have that effect on people,” Gabriel said. But he managed a smile. “I mean it. Go kiss the Lady Mary from me, too. Bring her if you think she’ll survive Mater. And don’t, if you don’t. We’ll ride south in five days.”

“You still mean to go to the tournament,” Gavin said.

Gabriel nodded. “Gavin, I’ve made plans and I’ve made other plans. Nell!” he shouted, and Nell appeared.

“Nell, I would like to formally apologize for my behaviour.”

“Apology accepted,” Nell snapped.

Gavin laughed outright. “Just what you deserve.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Nell, I need the scroll tube. You know it, the ivory one.”

Wordlessly, Nell went back to the outer room. And returned with a scroll tube.

“If I die-this is the plan.” Gabriel shrugged. “Master Smythe told me that if we missed the tournament, we’d probably rue it. He’s so helpful that way. For what it’s worth-and my credibility is a little singed, I admit-Plangere just lost a powerful controlled mage and the daemon warband took heavy losses. I intend to advertise that he came-and he ran.” Gabriel’s smile had nothing of pleasure in it, and everything of predatory anticipation. “He lost four wyverns, too. That will hurt his credibility with them.”

“So?” Gavin asked, holding the tube.

“So I do not want to speak my plans aloud, brother. For various reasons.” He pursed his lips. “Read the scroll and give it to Tom and Michael, and then bring it back here so I can make it ash.”

Drawn like a moth to a flame, Gavin was already reading. He whistled, and raised his head. “Holy Mary mother of God,” he said in shock. “Who else knows this?”

“Gelfred. Ranald. Kronmir.” Gabriel shrugged. “To be honest, none of you know everything I know.”

“You are so trusting,” Gavin said.

“If I go down, it’s yours,” Gabriel said.

“You almost died, didn’t you?” Gavin said.

“I should be dead, right now,” Gabriel said.

Bad Tom, missing his cousin’s calm efficiency, divided his herds in the fields south of Albinkirk. A flurry of messengers found him an Etruscan factor and one of Ser Gerald Random’s company clerks, and between them they took financial responsibility for a third of the herd and hired, on the spot, twenty of the captain’s men-at-arms, hurriedly placed under Sauce and Ser Gavin, and rode away west to the fair at Lissen Carak.

Bad Tom fretted at the delay, but he had no choice. So he read the scroll that Ser Michael handed him, grinned at the captain’s former squire, and handed it back. He drank off a stiff cup of wine and looked at Ser Michael.

“I’m sending Kaitlin to Lissen Carak,” Ser Michael said.

Bad Tom poured a second cup. “He almost died, and I wasn’t there,” he said suddenly.

Ser Michael nodded. “Me, either.”

Tom met the other knight’s eye. They were suddenly within a finger’s breadth of being of a height. “I don’t want to be somewhere else when he goes down. I want to be in the shield ring. I want to swing the last blow over his corpse. I want the sword women to take me with him when they go.”

“You’re not exactly a Christian, are you, Tom?” Michael asked.

Tom gulped wine. Very quietly, he said, “Have you read yon?”

Michael nodded.

“Tar’s tits,” Tom said.

Michael considered that for a long time. Then he smiled. “Yes,” he said, and went to spend a few last hours with his wife.

Kaitlin was her usual self-buoyant and undemanding and centred on the needs of others. She wanted Michael to take her to the captain, but Michael was against it and, besides, he knew that Ser Gavin was riding in the morning. “Let the captain sleep,” he said. “You can see him in the morning, when we bury the priest and the children.” His voice was rough with forced nonchalance.

Kaitlin, who had a clearer idea of what the chaplain might have meant to the captain than most of her husband’s peers, let it go, and spent the night curled in her husband’s arms. In the morning-well rested-she levered her growing bulk off the bed. “No longer the prettiest maid in the valley,” she said.

Ser Michael knelt and kissed her hands.

“He was a good priest,” she said. “He married us.”

Michael smiled. “Cully says he died healing the captain. That-” He paused.

Kaitlin frowned. “What?”

“Cully-this is Cully, sweetie, not some pious croaker-Cully says a man in a ragged robe came and knelt by the captain, and he woke up.”

Kaitlin crossed herself. “A saint?” she asked.

Ser Michael frowned. “I’d hate to think so,” he said. “I enjoyed jousting with him too much.”

The whole town came out in the spring rain. The rain fell in sheets, and made the turf-still frozen deep under-springy and squishy like a huge pile of wet wool.

Every man-at-arms in the town came in his harness, and squires cursed them.

And the Bishop of Albinkirk stood in the rain. The coffins were plain boards. One was empty, for the lost child, and there were only red scraps in poor Robin’s coffin, rushed and overwhelmed and devoured by imps after he lost control of the horses. The goodwife stood by the coffins of her dead children, and her eldest daughter stood with her, but now wore the scarlet tabard of the company, and even through the rain a distance could be seen between them.

The priest’s coffin had the banner of the Order of Saint Thomas over it, and no other marking but the dead priest’s crucifix, helm, and gauntlets.

Like every man present, the bishop was soaked to the skin, and cold.

He raised his arms.

“What words can I say that will equal the deeds of these people?” he asked. “How can I express a mother’s grief? Or a knight’s impotence in the face of death?”

The only sound was the rain. Gabriel flinched.

“In the beginning was the word,” the bishop said. “Word” echoed. “Only the true word, the Logos, could speak for these. As the Logos was, in the beginning, so he will wait until the end, alpha and omega. And, we can only hope, wait patiently for all of us to come to him.” He stood, arms wide, his soaking vestments hanging from him and his face raised to the sky.

Perhaps they expected a flash of lightning, or the acknowledgement of the heavens, but there was only an icy wind.

Six knights-Ser Gabriel, Ser Thomas, Ser Gavin, Ser Michael, Lord Wimarc and Ser Alison-lowered Father Arnaud into the muddy hole prepared for him. Toby had a pile of earth covered carefully with oil cloth, and he’d done the same for every dead archer and page and squire and child. One by one, the soaked knights lowered their dead into the embrace of the mud, and then put fresh earth atop them.

The goodwife stood and wept. When the last coffin passed her, she reached out to touch it, and then turned away.

Ser Gabriel stood with the bishop. “You are a man of power,” he said.

The bishop shrugged. “Today I am a man with no power to make a mother feel the love of God,” he said. “And no interest in pious mouthings.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. There was cold water running down his spine. His arming coat had soaked through.

“He was a great man.” Ser Gabriel surprised himself to say it.

“You loved him, then?” the bishop asked.

Ser Gabriel turned away. Then, very slowly, he shrugged. “He was a fine man-at-arms and my people loved him.”

“And you?” asked the bishop.

“Why must you ask?” Gabriel said. His shields were back up-a smile twisted his mouth. “I have some pious mouthings of my own to deliver, my lord bishop.”

He walked over to the company. They were as still as if on parade-a rank of knights and men-at-arms, and then a rank of squires, a rank of archers, and finally a rank of pages. Ready to receive a wyvern or a cavalry charge. Or bad news.

The captain stood in the rain. He raised his head and looked at them. “When we make mistakes, people die,” he said. “When we do our jobs well, other people die. Death is part of our trade-always there. And, like wages, it’s not fair. Why the baby? Why not someone old, like Cuddy?”

A few daring souls tittered.

The captain looked around. “I don’t know. I don’t know why Arnaud died, instead of me. But at another level, I know exactly why Arnaud died, and why Robin died and why we’re standing here in the rain. We’re here because we chose-we chose to fight. Some of you joined the company to fight for something you liked. Some of you fight for each other. Some for gold coins and a precious few fight because mayhap we’ll do some good, whatever good is.” He looked around. “The baby didn’t choose to fight, though. Nor the mother.”

He shrugged. “My point is, we know who killed them. We’re in the middle of a fight. The bishop reminds you of God’s mercy. I will only say this: I will not forget why they died, and when the moment comes…” He took a deep breath, and the men and women in the front row could see the red clash of his eyes. “If I am spared to that moment, my sword will not sleep.”

A sigh escaped the company, as if the whole body were a single person.

The Bishop of Albinkirk turned away in anger.

The captain squared his shoulders. “Company!” he called, as if his voice had never trembled with emotion.

They snapped to attention.

“Take your proper,” he called, “distance.”

The corporals slipped out of the front line and went forward three paces.

The three red lines turned about, and walked off-three paces for the second line, six for the third, nine for the fourth.

He signalled Ser Bescanon, who walked out from the officers’ rank and unsheathed his sword. He saluted with it, and the Red Knight returned his salute and walked off into the rain.

Ser Bescanon’s high cheekbones and long Occitan nose were dripping under his faceless cervelleur. “Have a care for your armour!” he bellowed. “Company-dismiss!”

They ran for shelter. Squires and pages cursed.

The bishop went and stood beside the captain under one of the eaves of the stable. “Revenge?” he asked. “Is that how you motivate them?” His voice was flat with anger.

The captain’s slightly reptilian green eyes seemed to sparkle. “My lord bishop, today-for the first time in a long time, let me add-revenge is what motivates me. They will follow.”

“You spurn everything for which that gentle man stood,” the bishop said.

The captain stood for a moment, tapping his riding gloves impatiently on his armoured thigh. He seemed on the edge of saying something but, instead, he held his peace, and his face became a smooth mask.

Then the mask failed him. The captain leaned close, his eyes very slightly tinged with red, and the bishop had to force himself to stand his ground. “You know,” he said softly, “that gentle man was killed by a shaman-a creature who had been bound. Magisters call it turning. You know it? A creature’s own will is stripped away, and replaced by the control of another. I killed the shaman, my lord bishop, but he was as helpless and as guiltless as your Jesus as a babe. He was a tool. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being a tool and of using others as tools and the whole bloody game.”

This was so far from what the bishop had expected that he had readied a very different argument. So he had to fold away his text, and take a deep breath.

“Then don’t play,” he said.

The captain’s eyes were a calm green again and the threat of emotional violence seemed to have subsided. He shrugged. “Do you know the questions that are asked of a knight at his making, my lord?”

The bishop nodded.

“I believe in those questions,” the captain said. “Who will protect the weak? Who will defy the enemy? Who will defend the widow and the orphan, the king, and the queen? Even, when forced to it, Holy Mother Church?”

The bishop blinked. “Jesus said we should turn the other cheek. Jesus said nothing of a triumph by violence.”

“Yes, well.” The captain smiled. “I think Jesus would have had a hard time with Bad Tom.” His riding gloves struck the steel of his cuisses with a snap.

“For now, though, the answer to those questions is-I will. I will defy the enemy. I’ve finished sacrificing my pieces one at a time.” He shook himself.

The bishop smiled. “You aren’t even talking to me, are you?”

The captain shrugged.

“I’m going to send you a new chaplain,” the bishop said.

Snap went the gloves.

“Make sure he’s a good jouster,” the captain said.

Ser Alcaeus was drawn to the walls. In his life, he had known much sweetness and much horror, but no experience had equalled the intensity-and the terror-of the minutes after the walls were breached in the siege of Albinkirk. He went to the stretch of northern walls that he had held, and met there-to his stupefaction-a young crossbowman he had known during the siege.

“By Saint George,” Ser Alcaeus said. He embraced the man. “Stefan?”

“Mark, and it please my lord,” the young man said.

“I thought you were dead,” Ser Alcaeus said.

Mark shrugged. “I thought so, too. I fell from the wall.” He shrugged. “I woke up hungry and with two broken legs.” He shrugged again. “Nothing found me to eat me, I guess.” He barked an uncomfortable laugh. “Now I guard the same stretch of wall.”

They looked out over the north and west together.

To the north, the Wild stretched on like a dark carpet, the great trees in the middle distance fading into the tall mountains of the Adnacrags and their white-clad peaks. A single road, wide enough for one wagon, wound out of the wooded hills at the edge of sight along the stable banks of the Canata river that came, cold and black, out of the mountains and descended into the valley through abandoned farmsteads and newly colonized steads and a handful of tilled fields from families that had survived the siege and planted last season.

There was a convoy on the road, glittering with spear points. It was still a good league from the walls, and yet it seemed to flare with colour.

To the south-west, the Royal Road ran up from the great ford at Southford and up to the south gate of Albinkirk, and then west out the west gate and on the north bank of the Cohocton. The north road-often a pair of wagon ruts-joined the Royal Road almost a half a league out from Albinkirk’s walls, where the flooded waters of the Canata ran south from the mountains and poured under the three stone arches of the ancient bridge, which the prosaic inhabitants called Troy, a hamlet of nine houses and a fortified tower.

Out on the Royal Road beyond Troy, a party of three people on horses-or perhaps donkeys-ambled in the clear spring air. The downpour had swept the sky clear and the wind had driven the clouds south. The heavy downpour had flooded the streams, but it had stripped the last ice out of the shaded corners of the fields.

“They must be damp,” Alcaeus said. He turned to young Mark, who shrugged.

“Sometimes I think of killing myself,” Mark said suddenly. His voice was flat.

Alcaeus looked at him carefully. He had things to do, and plots to weave. But this was a man who’d faced the wave of monsters with him.

So Alcaeus leaned casually back against the cold merlons of the curtain wall and tried to look nonchalant. “Why?” he asked quietly.

The young man looked out over the fields. “It’s all I think about.” He shrugged. “There’s no time before it. The attack. It is just… dark.”

Alcaeus nodded. “You think that perhaps this is not the best job for you?” he asked. “The same piece of wall?”

“They all died,” Mark said. “Everyone I knew. Everyone but me.” He turned and looked out over the fields. “I think that I died, too. Sometimes that’s how I make sense of it. I’m dead, and that’s why-” His voice had begun to rise in pitch.

Alcaeus had seen all the signs before.

“That’s why you should be dead, too, but you aren’t-” Young Mark stepped in close and went for the baselard at his waist, but Alcaeus, who had seen men broken by war and terror since he was a child, stripped the weapon from him and put the man down on the catwalk as gently as he could.

“Guard!” he called a few times.

The two roads met by the inn at Troy. The inn was small, nothing like the fortified edifice at Dorling, but the King’s Arms at Troy was a pleasant building with six mullioned windows newly replaced by the innkeeper, a tall, thin man whose Etruscan parentage showed in his straight black hair and aquiline nose. Sheer luck had preserved his roof and his floors from the forces of the Wild; he’d helped hold the walls of Albinkirk and done his best to fight fires. He’d poured his fortune into restoring his inn, preparing for what he hoped might be better times, and he’d watched with sickened apprehension as more and more reports came into his common room of raids on the frontier, of monsters and death.

The morning rain had been so heavy on the frozen ground that his lower basement had flooded, and he was down there, bailing with a bucket with all four of his scullery maids and both of his grooms, when his wife’s shrill voice summoned him to the common room. He pounded up the steps with the grooms at his heels and he took the long Etruscan halberd off its pegs behind the great fireplace as he passed and turned into the great low common room that was the centre of his inn-and his village.

There were neither irks nor boglins in the courtyard. Instead, framed in the doorway was a knight in the richest armour Giancarlo Grimaldo had ever seen. He bowed.

The young knight returned his bow. “You are the keeper?” the young man asked.

“My lord, I have that honour,” Giancarlo said, setting his halberd into the angle that the mantelpiece made with the wall.

“I am Ser Aneas Muriens, and my mother, the Green Lady of the North, wishes to take her midday meal in your establishment.” He inclined his head slightly. “We are wet, and my mother is chilled.”

“I will make up the fire and serve you only the best.” The yard outside was filled with men-at-arms and servants, and they would all need to be fed. It was two months’ business in a single convoy, and all he had to do was survive it.

He turned to Nob, his best groom. “Run along to Master Jean’s and ask for both his daughters. Quick as you can.”

His wife leaned forward and hissed, “And send Jean’s son Robbie to Lady Helewise at the manor house and see if you can get her girl and Jenny to serve the duchess. Fetch Lady Helewise herself if she can come.”

Nob was out the kitchen and running in heartbeats, spraying new mud as he went.

But the great Duchess of Westwall was not coming in. She was out in the stone-flagged street-stone flagged only to the limits of the village, and with the sewer running down the middle in stone-slabbed confines cleaned by an old stream-sitting on a magnificent, high-blooded eastern riding horse. Chatting with a nun on a donkey.

“Let her through!” Ghause snapped at her men-at-arms. Her tone of command gave way to the dulcet accents of seduction as she leaned down. “My gossip, the saintly Amicia. Give an old woman your blessing, my sweet.”

Amicia had had several minutes to recognize the banner, and the men-at-arms. She knew Ghause’s youngest son and her captain. She still found the impact of the woman enough to rob her of words.

Ghause Muriens, mother of the Red Knight and of Ser Gavin, wife of the Earl of Westwall, was not a tall woman, although few people remembered her as small. She was, in fact, just five feet tall in her stockings; though not so small when booted and spurred atop a tall horse. Her honey-blond hair was as unmarked by time as her face or the skin of her neck or the tops of her breasts, and she wore the very latest in Etruscan fashion, a long pointed hat with a great spray of ostrich plumes held in an heraldic brooch, a perfectly dry cloak in her own colours of green and sable, lined entirely in sable so black it looked hermetical and trimmed in royal ermine to which she had every right as the king’s sister. She wore gloves of dark green and two matching emerald rings in red gold, and her waist was clasped with a heavy knight’s belt of cockle shells in the matching gold, and a similar chain-the shells full size-lay over her shoulders and breasts under her cloak. Her spurs were gold like a knight’s, and she wore a great sword of war-an uncommon accoutrement for a woman even in Alba-the scabbard green and all its fittings gold.

Just behind her in the crowded street was a great bird, too big to be a hawk and possibly large even for an eagle, on a perch and jessed and belled and hooded. It was huge. The size of a big dog. It gave a mad screech that made horses shy.

The duchess glanced at it and turned back. She wore the value of the whole village on her back. The people came to their doors or lined the street to see her, and she waved politely and smiled.

Amicia took a deep breath, dismounted, and curtsied.

The duchess smiled. “You are really such a pretty thing. Don’t you think those breasts and those legs are wasted on God? He doesn’t care. Let him have the ugly old maids. Those legs were made for sport, sweeting.”

Ghause’s men-at-arms were used to her. No one leered. No one commented.

Amicia rose from her curtsey. “No one could be immune to your grace’s flattery, or fail to perceive your meaning,” the nun said.

Ghause smiled. “I like you, my little witch. Come and share a meal with an old woman. You know my son is, by all report, in yonder fortress.”

Amicia smiled. “So I have heard.”

“You look tired,” Ghause said. “Too much prayer?”

Amicia was tempted to say that she’d been drained of her ops for two days and nights, but chose not to share that. She made herself smile. “Too many young lovers,” she said.

Ghause’s beautiful blue eyes almost bulged. There was a long silence, and then she snorted so hard that her horse started and she had t0 curb the animal. Then she laughed and laughed.

Amicia was not used to the level of service that the duchess provided. The duchess retired and changed into a yet more splendid dress of green velvet that left no man present in any doubt as to the shape-and tone-of her body. Her hair was brushed until it shone like the red gold of her jewels.

It came to Amicia that the great duchess was nervous.

The innkeeper and his staff were as courteous as the strain of twenty men-at-arms and forty more servants on a country inn could leave them, and she chose a strong red wine to steady her nerves, but the best tonic was the sight of Helewise-Lady Helewise to the older locals. She was the lady of a manor just to the south, and she came in quietly, wearing a good wool gown and an apron, with her daughter Phillippa and another girl the same age, Jenny, both pretty and blond and capable of being gentlewomen when called on to do so. After a whispered conversation with the innkeeper, Helewise went out into the yard and spoke to the captain of the duchess’s men-at-arms and took wine to Ser Aneas in person.

Ser Aneas gave her a deep bow. “You are no inn servant,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Nor I am, ser knight, but in a village, we all help each other. Especially in these times, mm?”

The men-at-arms were all gentlemen, and they had dismounted, and stood in knots in the yard. The inn was too small for them to all go in at once.

Through the windows, Helewise could see the keeper’s wife bustling to make the two common room long tables fit for gentry.

“We will have two tables ready for you in a moment,” Helewise said. “If you gentlemen would be kind enough to enter in files, and file to your seat, that would allow the duchess some privacy. And allow us to get you fed efficiently.”

Ser Aneas bowed.

Phillippa and Jenny came into the yard with silver trays-her own-full of good Venike glasses, each filled with the best Occitan, a sweet wine that travelled well. They served like ladies, and the gentlemen appraised them with the glass and the silver.

Helewise took Ser Aneas’s glass. The duchess’s captain bowed. “I am Ser Henri,” he said with an accent as Venike as the glass.

Helewise dropped him a straight-backed curtsey without tilting her tray. “My lord does us honour.”

Ser Henri laughed. “By God, I’ve seen more courtesy in this inn yard than in a year at Ticondaga.”

Helewise nodded. “You’ll find that the keeper is your countryman, if I read your accent aright, my lord.”

“By the cross of Christ!” Ser Henri said. “Mayhap he has some of the wine of home, then. Goodwife? My lady?”

Helewise nodded. “Folk hereabouts call me a lady, ser knight. But my husband, while a good man-at-arms, was never a knight.”

She went in with her tray-but not before her eyes summoned her daughter and Jenny, who were basking too long in the admiration of twenty young men.

“What brings you to Albinkirk?” the duchess asked. She had a healthy appetite-she wolfed down half a rabbit, all of a capon, and moved on to a dish of greens in the new fashion, apparently oblivious to the miracle of the innkeeper having greens in late Martius.

Amicia ate more sparingly due to her Lenten vows, but the food was good and the wine better. She sat with the duchess, curtained off from the men-at-arms who were now seated and loud, ensconced at the two long tables nearest the door.

“My Abbess does not feel that she can travel just now,” Amicia said. “I will represent the Order at Ser John’s council.”

The duchess met her eye. “You are full of surprises, my love. Will you sit in Sophie’s chair and be the Abbess? By God, that might be enough power to turn my head away from marriage. Who wants men anyway?” She laughed, swallowed a morsel of truffle and sat back to sip wine. “Outside of the one thing they do well.”

“War?” Amicia asked.

“An excellent point. War and sex.” Ghause smiled. “I am just a crude old woman.”

“So you insist,” Amicia said.

Ghause raised a hand and one of her own ladies came.

“Fetch me the keeper,” Ghause said. “So-you feel you might have to spurn my son’s advances to make yourself the most powerful woman in the north?”

Amicia felt that she was getting better at dealing with Ghause. “No, I don’t feel that way at all,” she said.

The innkeeper came through the curtain and bowed deeply.

“Keeper-your food is wonderful. I am most pleased.” The duchess held out her hand, and the keeper bowed and kissed it-an almost unheard of honour given their relative stations. “And these dumplings-what are they?”

The keeper bowed. “In Etrusca, they are called gnocchi.”

“Made with truffles,” the duchess said.

“Your grace has all my secrets,” the keeper replied gallantly. “But I will tell my wife. She made them.”

Ghause nodded. Her green eyes were smiling. “I feel these dumplings might threaten the shape of my thighs but, by the crucified Christ, they make me want to eat all day.” She sparkled at him.

He bowed, clearly overwhelmed.

She dismissed him with a wave. “I will tell every gentle I meet to visit you,” she said. “Please feel free to display my arms in your window.”

The keeper bowed and retired, the colour of his spring business altered for the better. Amicia had a glimpse of Lady Helewise-a good friend-and the two women shared a glance, and the curtain closed.

“So you won’t change your mind,” Ghause snapped at Amicia, the moment that the keeper was gone, as if the interruption had never taken place.

Amicia was tempted, to her own surprise, to confide in this terrible woman, but she held her peace. “No, your grace.”

“Damn you, then. You’d have made me some fine, sly, long-legged grandchildren with powers.” She leaned in. “If you won’t have him for yourself, will you help me find him a mate?”

Amicia gave a small cry.

Ghause laughed grimly. “Just as I thought.”

“But of course I’ll help,” Amicia said. She was surprised at herself-at the speed of her reaction and its intensity. She’d had a year to adjust. She was in charge of her own destiny.

Ghause smiled. “You are very brave. Good. Come, travel with me, and we’ll hold each other up, as women must in this world.”

In two hours, the inn had fed and wined the duchess, all her staff, twenty men-at-arms and their squires and pages, the bird’s handlers, two huntsmen in charge of a pair of dead aurochs in a wagon, and a hundred horses had been fed and watered. Every man and woman in the village had been involved at some level, from the making of winter sausage last autumn to the desperate plea for grooms and maids.

Ser Henri tossed a purse to the keeper as the great hooded bird cleared the yard in its green and gold wagon. “I will not forget this inn,” he said. “My thanks, and those of every one of my knights.”

He trotted his great war horse-all the knights had mounted their heavy horses for the entry into Albinkirk-and rode out after his convoy.

The keeper went wearily into his common room, where half the village was being served a pint of ale. He upended half a year’s profits on the serving counter in front of his wife, who hugged him.

He turned to Helewise. “Gold, or ale?” he asked.

She smiled. “That was not enough of a favour to need repayment,” she said. She enjoyed her pint of ale, collected her daughters, and walked them home across the muddy fields along the still-frozen margins.

The Duchess of Westwall’s entry into Albinkirk was anything but spontaneous. Her men-at-arms glittered and any sign of travel stain or mud had been erased at the inn, and the whole column swept into town like an avenging army. Her men-at-arms wore matching green and gold; her wagons were gold and green, and the enormous bird, a tame monster of some sort, was itself badged in gold and green, like the duchess herself in her emeralds. Most of the population of Albinkirk was in the streets, and Captain Henri distributed largesse to the poor from his saddlebow.

The duchess rode in the middle of her column. She was greeted at the gate in blazing sunshine by Ser John, and escorted up through the narrow and winding streets to the citadel, where she and her immediate staff were to be housed.

She stood in the great hall under the timbered roof and smiled at Ser John, who felt the power of her like a stallion smelling a mare, and the bishop, who treated her more as a forbidden text, and saved his warmth for Sister Amicia, with whom he shared a chaste embrace.

“But where are my sons?” the duchess asked.

Ser John bowed. “Ser Gabriel and Ser Gavin are hard at work in my tiltyard,” he said.

“Send them to me when they are presentable,” Ghause said. She offered her hand to the Captain of Albinkirk. Over her shoulder, she said to Ser Henri, “Feel free to take Ser Aneas to his brothers.”

She put her arm through Amicia’s. “Come,” she said.

Amicia knew that she was being used for something. But she had little enough choice, and she went willingly with the duchess.

Four huntsmen brought the bird.

If the morning had been wet and filled with mourning, midday had been dryer and had been as physically hard as the morning had been on the spirit. The captain had seemed determined to unhorse every member of his company, and he rode his great war horse Ataelus on course after course. He’d stretched Ser John over his crupper early, as Ser John had to greet the man’s infernal mother. The Captain of Albinkirk knew his lower back would feel the force of the blow for days-but when the duchess swept regally to her rooms, Ser John led her household knights back into the yard, mounted with them, and rode to the tiltyard under the walls, facing south.

As he arrived, Ser Alcaeus unhorsed a young Occitan spectacularly, dropping the man without appearing to alter his own seat. He swept down the list with his unbroken lance tip high.

There were twenty women and a hundred men watching. They applauded.

Ser Michael entered the lists at the eastern end, and Bad Tom entered from the west. They were plainly armoured, without surcoats or fancy harness, and both wore great helms for jousting instead of their bascinets.

They flicked salutes at each other and the horses moved.

Ser Henri nodded approval. “These are very good,” he said.

They met-and passed. Both lances broke in a spray of ash splinters. Both men were as erect as equestrian statues.

Ser John smiled grimly. “They are very good,” he said. “If you’d care to play, just take a place in the line down there.” Below them was a chute, with a line of mounted men on war horses. War horses that fidgeted, farted, and threatened to kick or bite.

Ser Henri rode down into the chute, and so did Ser Aneas. A few of the other men-at-arms joined in. Others dismounted, gave their horses to grooms, and began to spar with swords or wooden wasters-or just to stop at the barriers and watch.

Ser Gavin broke a lance on Ser Bescanon, who got his lance tip on Ser Gavin’s helmet but failed to strike the crest.

Ser Phillipe caught a young knight from Jarsay in the shoulder, and his strike destroyed the other man’s pauldron and injured his shoulder. A dozen men took the injured knight away, and Ser Phillipe, visibly shaken, had his shield dismounted and withdrew.

Two unremarkable courses were run, and Ser Henri rode forward. He took a lance from Toby, who was serving every man-at-arms on that side of the lists.

Ser Gabriel was seen to move his horse forward, past Ser Francis Atcourt, who raised his visor and said something in derision.

Ser Henri saluted, and charged. Seconds later, he was lying unconscious on the sand, and the Red Knight all but rode over him returning. Ser Gavin was seen to speak sharply to his brother.

Ser Aneas, one of the youngest men to joust that day, readied himself to meet Ser Gavin, his brother. He conceded nothing; his horse rode at the very edge of the barrier, and he put his lance into his older brother’s visor.

Both spears exploded-and both men lost their helms, split by the blows, and rode bareheaded in opposite directions. They were wildly applauded.

Ser Henri was quick to recover, and insisted he’d never been fully unconscious.

Ser Gavin had an odd look when Ser John approached him. “That looked-rough,” Ser John said.

Ser Gavin looked away. “He was our jousting instructor. From boyhood.”

Ser John laughed. “A case of the biter bit?” he asked.

Ser Gavin met his eye. “Don’t let my brother face him again,” he said.

Ser John nodded. “I have run lists afore. But I’ll bear that in mind. Your lady mother wishes to see you both.”

Ser Gavin nodded. “So I gather from the string of pages we’ve had. But our mater wants to see Gabriel first, so I’ll cool my heels.”

Ser John scratched under his aventail. “In that case, I wonder if we might gather all the captains for a brief-mmm. A meeting before the council.”

Ser Gavin looked at Ser Henri, helmet off and a pair of pages serving him water. “That might be a fine notion,” he said.

Before three more courses had been run, a table was waiting in the outer yard and wine was served. Ser Gabriel sat in harness with Ser Gavin, Ser Michael and Ser Thomas. Ser Henri sat with Ser Aneas. Ser John sat with Ser Ricar Fitzalan. Ser Alcaeus joined them after a final course with Count Zac, who was perhaps the most unconventional jouster anyone had ever seen.

Ser John got straight to the point. “Gentles all-my thanks. The council is for politics. But it seems to me-with so many puissant gentlemen all gathered together-that we could send a small army into the field right now, and perhaps put the Wild back on its haunches.”

Ser Gabriel drank off his wine. “That’s blunt. You’d like to use my lances-my professionals-for free.”

Ser John nodded. “Yes.”

Ser Thomas the Drover raised an eyebrow. “And all my cousins, too? Who’ll command ’em? Hillmen don’t take orders from everyone.”

Gabriel laughed. “In my experience, from anyone.”

Bad Tom grinned.

Ser John looked at Ser Ricar. “The Captain of the King’s Guard will take the field.”

Ser Ricar rose. “If you gentlemen agree, I’ll call a muster. I’ll pay king’s wages for ten days. We’ll sweep the north bank of the Cohocton and cover the fair. With a hundred lances and the support of the sisters of the Order there’s not likely to be anything we can’t handle.”

“Ten days!” Ser Thomas shook his head. “The forage by Southford won’t feed my beasts ten days.”

“If we don’t cover the fair…” Ser John shrugged. “The convoys are just coming in from the south,” he said. “I’m trying to keep the roads clear, but-”

Ser Gabriel-the mercenary-surprised them all. He stood. “I’m for it. Tom, let’s give them a week and then see where we all are. Ser Ricar, can you make do with a week, and an option for a few more days if required?”

Ser Henri raised an eyebrow. “It is not my choice but my lady’s,” he said. “But it sounds worthy, and certes, Ticondaga would be better knowing the south was safe.”

Zac raised two bushy eyebrows at Ser Gabriel. He gave a slight nod.

“Count Zac is an officer of the Emperor,” he said. “He serves with me in my person as the Megas Dukas of the Empire. He will join you for your spring hunt.”

Ser Ricar clanked over to the dapper easterner and shook his hand. Ser Alcaeus took out a wax tablet and began to write at his captain’s elbow. “We have forty lances and another twenty stradiotes,” he said. “Ser Henri?”

The Etruscan rubbed his head. “If the duchess agrees,” he said carefully, “I have twenty lances. And four huntsmen who know the enemy intimately.”

Ser Ricar nodded. “I also have forty lances, though eight of them are on patrol even now.”

“So-with the count’s imperial troops, we can muster as many as six hundred men,” Ser Ricar said with relish. “By God, gentlemen.”

Bad Tom sighed. “Well, I can gi’ ye another hundred who’ll face anything in the Wild.”

“I count this a favourable sign, gentlemen,” Ser John said. “The council has not even begun, and we have an army in the field.” He turned to Ser Ricar. “When will you march?”

“Dawn,” Ser Ricar said. “I’ll open the ball with a sweep along the west road. I know our fathers all taught us not to split a force, but I’ll send half north of the Cohocton and half south, and we’ll clear the whole convoy route on both banks.”

Ser Gabriel rose. “Then, if you gentlemen will settle the minutiae of what you have clearly planned, I will release my soldiers under Ser Bescanon. I must visit my mother.”

He bowed to all-even Ser Henri-and walked across the springy turf to where his squire waited.

“Why does he set my teeth on edge?” asked Ser Ricar.

“He was not like this as a boy,” Ser Henri said. “He was a most unmanly boy, much given to-”

Ser Gavin appeared between them, and there was no more reminiscence.

Ser Gabriel unarmed carefully, and went to his room to bathe. In his room, alone with Toby, Nell, and two of his Thrakian servants, he drank two cups of malmsey and put on a suit of red wool worked with his arms, a golden spur rowel of six points that might have been mistaken for an hermetical symbol. He put on his gold belt of knighthood. He didn’t wear a sword, but he didn’t disdain his ivory-gripped baselard.

Nell and Toby had some idea what he was going to. They both tried to smile.

He had time to wish he had Tom, or Alison. Or Arnaud.

He walked to the small balcony his room had, high above the valley. He took one breath, drank off the last of his wine, and set the cup down a little too hard.

“No,” he said, when Toby, dressed in his best, presented himself as an escort. He motioned instead to Ser Christos’s son, Giorgos, a tall Thrakian with a beak of a nose and no Alban whatsoever. “Please come with me,” he said in High Archaic. He smiled at Toby to indicate that there was no slight intended, but he didn’t need to have his mother’s words repeated.

And then he went out into the hall. Giorgos knew the way-it was his duty-and led him to the south tower. They climbed two dozen steps in a tight stairway and emerged onto a platform with two doors. Giorgos knocked and they waited.

A demure young woman with red hair and bronze eyes opened the door and curtsied. She led them into the outer solar, almost identical to the same chambers that Ser Gabriel had in the north tower.

“Is that my prodigal son?” Ghause called. “I have a present for you, my darling. Come in.”

The bronze-eyed young vixen opened the door to the inner solar, and Gabriel, after a deep breath, and ignoring the trembling of his hands, walked in.

Amicia sat in the sunlight, doing embroidery. The winter had sufficed for her to learn some of the tricks of it, and she’d learned to make letters with a prick stitch and to cut them out and overcast stitch them to an altar cloth before couching them in silk thread. She was slowly working the paschal cloth of her chapel at Southford, the linen and silk going everywhere with her, packed in oiled silk and canvas. Helewise had taught her-a lady’s pastime, and not usually one for nuns. Her I H S was crisp, the gothic letters elegant and almost even.

She was working on the last I in domini when Ghause joined her in the inner solar and began to fuss with the great bird on the perch.

Amicia realized she was casting.

Ghause finished with some tuneless, throaty sounds that made Amicia blush.

Ghause laughed. “Ah, my pretty, I usually work alone. And naked.”

Amicia laughed. “As did I, once.”

“We are not so different,” Ghause said.

Amicia put her head down and went back to her stitches. “What is it?” she asked.

“A gift for Gabriel. No, don’t get up. That will be him now.” She put one hand on the inner solar door and called, “Is that my prodigal son? I have a present for you, my darling. Come in.”

Then she flung the door wide. As she did, with her right hand, she removed the cover on the great bird.

It was bigger than Amicia had imagined, but her shock was completely overwhelmed by the reality of Gabriel Muriens.

It was not that he had changed.

It was merely that he was.

Gabriel lost control of his face and his heart, like an untried army in an ambush. He was blind with the sight of Amicia, and unwarned, unprepared-a grin covered his face, and he stepped forward and took her hand and kissed it.

And she flushed.

And his mother laughed.

And the young griffon on the perch, a true monster of the Wild, was subsumed in a wave of love. It gazed on Gabriel, raised its great wings, and poured its own love back. It gave a great cry as if its heart had been pierced.

Ghause’s laughter rose. “Oh! Brilliant!” she said. She stepped forward like a victor delivering the coup de grâce, and kissed her son on the cheek. “Two presents, then.”

Amicia, moved beyond endurance, rose too quickly and stepped on her altar cloth. But she set her face, and pushed past him, and walked, head high, out of the room.

“She’ll come back,” Ghause said. “She wants you more than she wants her anaemic vows.”

Gabriel was trembling.

“I have brought you a mighty gift,” Ghause said. “And where are my thanks? Hello, my son.”

“You used her to bait the impressment of a griffon?” Gabriel asked.

“Of course! What better love bait than your leman? As good as anything in a romance. And look, it’s done! Your own griffon, which cost me a lot of effort, too.” Ghause was not a woman given to prattle, but the rage on her son’s face scared her. “Oh, my dear. Griffons need to be greeted with love. That’s all that holds them. You cannot turn a griffon. They’re too stupid. And too smart. Now he’s all yours.” She smiled. “All’s well that ends well.”

“You have not changed much,” Gabriel said. He did smile at the griffon. He walked to the perch and cooed at it. Him.

“How old?” he asked.

Ghause smiled inwardly, knowing she had indeed impressed him. “He’s about two months old and he eats like ten wolves. He’ll be four times that size in six months. His mother was big enough for a grown man to ride.”

“You killed her,” Gabriel said.

Ghause sputtered with indignation. “She was wild! And dangerous!”

“The same might be said of you, Mater.” Gabriel was gazing into the eyes of the monster. It looked back at him like a great daft cat.

“You have changed, my son,” Ghause said. “Look at you. A Power.”

“This is the wrong day for you to say that, Mother.” Gabriel stumbled to the window and looked out. Then he turned, unable to stop himself, and went back to the bird.

“But you are a Power, now,” she purred. “I made you to be one, and look at you. They worship you. They all worship you.”

“Stop it!” he said.

“When you take the kingdom, they will-”

He met the griffon’s wide, mad, delighted eyes.

“He’ll need constant attention, of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how much effort I put into this, child. I-”

“Mother,” Gabriel said. “Please stop.”

He turned and they were eye to eye.

“You always were a stiff-necked boy,” she said with a sniff.

“You killed my tutor and my master-at-arms,” he said.

She frowned. “I most certainly did not. Henri killed your so-called master-at-arms, and Prudentia-” She shrugged. “I don’t honestly know what happened.”

“You ordered them killed,” he insisted.

“How tiresome. Stop changing your ground. Killed, ordered killed? What boots it, my child? They were nothing. They were leading you astray and, let us admit it, you needed to be a little tougher. Didn’t you?” She put a hand on his chest, fingers splayed.

He left it there.

Ghause looked up into his face. When last she’d seen him, he’d been a little taller than she, and now he towered over her. Suddenly her pupils widened.

“Where is Ser Henri?” she asked.

Gabriel laughed. “I am not you, Mother. I did not kill him. Only his amour propre took any injury.”

Ghause stamped her foot. “Let us not waste our time together, love. I have many things to share with you-workings to share, plans to make.” She smiled. “You are Duke of Thrake now!”

He responded to her smile and her tone of pleasure. She was his mother. “I am, indeed,” he said.

She laughed, a throaty, rich laugh. “Oh, my dear heart! Every inch of ground along the wall is ours. The earl and I-and you-what a kingdom we will make!”

Gabriel ran his fingers gently through the great griffon’s feathers. “No,” he said.

She frowned. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I mean, I have no intention of taking any lessons from you in diplomacy. Whatever you intend, I am not party to it. While we are on this uncomfortable ground, you may add the hermetical arts. I suspect you have nothing to teach me, and anyway, I wouldn’t trust you in my head.”

“Nothing to teach you!” Ghause replied, now stung to her core. “You are my child. I made you.”

Gabriel gave her a little bow with an ease that made him proud of himself. His mother terrified him, but by God, he was keeping it in. He clasped his hands together to hide their trembling.

“I had Harmodius in my head for a year,” he said, every syllable like the blow of a trebuchet.

“You work the gold?” she asked.

In the aethereal, in her other sight, she watched as he plucked a ray of sunshine from the gold and her own breath from the green and bound them into an amulet. He handed her a little Herakles knot of rose stems.

She accepted it.

It burst-a little explosion of rose petals and incense.

“I have my own plans. They do not include you.” Gabriel bowed. “I admit I do want the griffon.”

Ghause bent her head. She backed away a step, in defeat. “As you will, my puissant son,” she said, and with the ease of years of practice, kept the ring of triumph from her voice.

My son! Together, we will rule everything. After I take you back.

An hour later, Gavin found his brother alone in his own outer solar. He’d been warned by Nell.

He found Gabriel feeding a dead chicken, feathers and all, to a griffon that seemed to grow before his very eyes. The very air was tainted with the thing’s smell, like a musky eroticism flavoured with blood.

“You alive?” Gavin asked. “What the hell is that?”

Gabriel sighed. “Very much alive. That is, sorry, hurting, anxious, and in a black mood. It’s like being fucking fifteen all over again.” He smiled bleakly. “But she gave me a griffon! He’s lovely, ain’t he?”

Gavin laughed and poured wine. “I’d like a griffon, too. I see I don’t rate one.” He shook his head. “Is my sudden desire to rut with any servant girl I find willing-”

Gabriel winced. “That may just be me. No, it’s the griffon. He can’t help it. They all emit love, and drink love, and… think love.”

Gavin laughed. “Blessed Virgin, it’s like being fifteen. Make it stop!”

“You mean the sudden peaks of desire, or the effect Mother has on us? Just like being fifteen,” Gabriel said. He tossed the chicken’s head into the air, and a great talon caught it and the eagle-beak crunched it. Gabriel stepped away, and Gavin, as if engaged in wrestling, tricked his weight and forced him into an embrace.

“No,” Gavin said. “We’re not children, and we won’t take sides. When we were young, she divided us and conquered us.”

Gabriel hugged him a moment and then stepped back. “She used Amicia against me.”

Gavin laughed bitterly. “You should have heard her advice about Lady Mary!” He blushed even to think of it. “I don’t feel I can just wander off to Lissen Carak and leave you.” He shrugged. “You know she has Aneas with her.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You know-sometimes, you really are the best brother,” he said. “Go and be with your lady love. I’ll stay home with our mother.” He sighed. “And Aneas.”

“And your lover, the nun,” Gavin said.

Gabriel sat down and put his head in his hands. “Exactly.”

“No one can say we aren’t an entertaining family.” Gavin sat opposite his brother. “Why the nun, brother? She’s pretty enough, I admit. I rather fancied her myself.” He shrugged. “But…”

Gabriel sat back. “How very often I’ve wondered, brother. I think I’m a bear-hunter caught helplessly in my own bear trap.”

“You worked something on her?” Gavin asked.

“Something like that,” Gabriel answered. He smiled wryly. “Whenever you think you are very clever, that’s when you are getting ready to be awesomely stupid.”

“Based on your own experience?” Gavin asked. “I should stop drinking if you’re serious about letting me go.”

“The fewer witnesses the better,” Gabriel said.

“And her notion of making Pater the King of the North?” Gavin asked, his hand on the door latch.

Gabriel smiled grimly. “The frosting on the bun, dear brother. She thinks I made myself Duke of Thrake to secure her borders.”

Ser Gavin turned, hand still on the door. “Did you?” he asked.

The silence stretched.

Ser Gabriel came and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Gavin, once upon a time, I had plans. Now, they have changed.” He looked away. “So the answer is not simple.”

Gavin nodded. Then gave up on annoyance and embraced his brother again. “You are the king of ambiguity,” he said.

“Send Lady Mary my best regards,” Ser Gabriel said.

The Council of the North started with little fanfare and less ceremony than anyone expected. The next morning, all the principals gathered in the great hall of the citadel. No trumpets sounded, and even the duchess seemed subdued.

Ser John Crayford sat at the head of the table. He was wearing a good green pourpoint and matching hose, and his businesslike attire was reflected on every participant except the duchess. She faced him down the length of the table, enthroned in a tall wooden chair her people had brought and surrounded by her maids. She wore figured velvet shot with gold thread-embroidered griffons.

On the right side of the table sat Amicia, for the abbey at Lissen Carak, and Lord Wayland-hardly a famous name, but Gregario, Lord Wayland, was the chief of the small lords of the northern Brogat, the Hills, and the lands just south of Albinkirk. He was himself a famous swordsman, and he wore the latest Harndoner fashions. By his side was his ally and lifelong friend, the Grand Squire, a dapper, handsome man of fifty in a green pourpoint cunningly embroidered-another of the north country’s famous swordsmen, and one of the north’s richest landowners. Closest to the duchess sat the Keeper of Dorling’s son. He was a tall, hard-faced youth, called Allan. In the Keeper’s own country, they called him Master of Dorling.

Across the table from them sat Ser Gabriel in his person as the Duke of Thrake, and Ser Thomas as the Drover, and Ser Alcaeus, representing the Emperor as Ser John represented the King. By courtesy-there had been other Councils of the North-a seat was left empty for the Wyrm. There were no Orleys left to take the seat by Lord Wayland. Instead, Lord Matteo Corner sat with Peter Falconer-the first the chief of the Etruscan merchants then in the north, and the other an officer of Ser Gerald Random. Between them, they knew, and might speak for, the mercantile interests. Across from them, the council was balanced by the interests of the Church in the person of Albinkirk’s bishop. It was an august gathering, and aside from the duchess’s ladies, Ser Gregario’s wife Natalia in the most fashionable dress in the hall, and Toby and Jamie, the squire of Ser John, the hall was empty of servants-and moths.

No one was late. When everyone was seated, Ser John rose.

“My lady duchess-my lord Duke of Thrake, my lord bishop, Master, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I am a mere soldier. But I have summoned this council in the name of the king, and I’m most grateful-in his name-that the king’s own sister and the rest of you have found time and means to come.

“My intention is simple. I want to create a unified plan to defend the north country this summer-yes, and for many summers to come. Thanks to your efforts, we have already put a small army in the field at no cost to the people of this district and, if God will grace our efforts, that’s a fine opening to our discussions.”

He looked over the table. “My scouts, and those of the Emperor and the duke, have provided us with reports that the bishop’s scribes have copied for all of you,” he said. “In brief, Plangere is coming. He has an army of the Wild and another of Outwallers, and he has new allies-Galles, who have a flood of reinforcements from home.” Ser John looked around.

Ghause looked bored. “So?” she asked.

“So, my lady duchess, he has the force to take Albinkirk. Or Ticondaga. Or Middleburg. Or Lissen Carak. Or even Lonika. But not any of them, if we all field an army together.” He was going to go on, but Ghause interrupted.

“Fiddlesticks,” she said. “Poppycock. I can see straight through him and he’s as impotent as-” She gave a wicked smile. “Never mind. He failed to defeat Ser Gabriel the other day-and he failed to take Lissen Carak a year ago.”

Ser Gabriel pursed his lips. “I don’t agree,” he said.

Ghause looked at him as if he was a mythical being. “I’m sorry, my child. Did I mishear you?”

Gabriel shook his head slightly. “I had a chance to learn from one of his officers.”

Ghause raised a perfect eyebrow. “You tortured him?”

“I subsumed him and took his memories,” Gabriel said.

A near perfect silence fell over the table.

“Ah,” Ghause said, with a smile that could only be described as motherly. “Please go on.”

“I have the impression, first, that the attempt on me was put together with clay and spit, and was not a serious effort. Despite which”-he looked away-“it was very nearly successful.”

“Perhaps,” Ghause said.

“And I also received the impression that Plangere is well-prepared. That the extent of his own preparations left him unwilling to take any risks.” Gabriel shrugged. “Why should he?”

“I don’t believe there’s enough men and power in the world to take Ticondaga,” Ghause said.

“No fortress is stronger than the men on its walls,” Ser John said. “And no fortress can stand a year of siege. Starvation can take any stronghold.”

Ghause sighed. “So much drama. Very well, what do you want?”

“I want to appoint a Captain of the North. And I want to have him muster an army.”

“This captain is to be you?” Ghause asked.

Ser John shrugged. “I was thinking of your son, Gabriel.”

Gabriel looked surprised. “I am going to the tournament at Harndon.”

Ser John nodded. “Harndon is five days’ ride for a single determined man and his escort. Faster if there’s a change of horses.” He looked over the table. “Wherever he strikes, we’ll be able to combine our forces. While I have greater fears for our ancient fortresses than the duchess, I agree that none of them will fall quickly. We will have a month or more to raise our armies if we are prepared.”

“My husband is ready to lead an army straight at the sorcerer, if that’s what you want,” Ghause said. She sat up, like a fierce hawk disturbed at her rest. “Why wait for him? Why not strike him first?”

Ser Gabriel frowned. “By water, your grace?” he asked.

Ghause smiled. “Yes, my child. By water.”

“You are a puissant magistra, Mother. Would you allow an attack on Ticondaga by water?” Ser Gabriel’s tone was quiet and respectful.

Ghause laughed. “I agree that water is a wonderful element to manipulate,” she said.

“And every step he takes south of the inner sea stretches his resources,” Ser John said. “Why should we go there and stretch ours?”

Lord Corner put his hands flat on the table. “Not all of us are men of war,” he said. “I see no reason to risk an army in the Wild.”

Ghause laughed-a genuine laugh, not her laugh of derision. “You are in the Wild right now, my lord,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say, there is no Wild. Irks and boglins-men and priests. And little to tell between them.”

Lord Wayland was a careful man. He leaned back, one finger against his chin. “It is always easier to rally men to defend their homes than to invade someone else’s.”

Now Ghause snorted her derision.

Amicia looked up and down the table. “My lords-how will we know when the sorcerer launches his true effort? Will he not attempt to deceive us?”

Ser John smiled at her. “An excellent point. No army will march and denude any district. We must have an arrière-ban ready to stand on the defence.”

Ser Gabriel met Amicia’s eyes. “It is an excellent point, Amicia. But I think that we can build a mobile army that will move faster than Thorn can.”

A frisson of power passed through the air.

Ghause threw back her head and laughed. “Bless you, my child,” she said. “You amuse me. Taunt him!” She smiled. “Thorn,” she said, seductively.

The air darkened a moment.

Eyes were wide.

“Leave it there,” Ser Gabriel snapped. “If we say a third, the die is cast. As it is, it will stay in the air.” He smiled. “I see all sorts of things that can go wrong, Ser John. But Alcaeus and I have a chrysobul from the Emperor authorizing us to call on the field army, which will, by the first of April or so, be at Middleburg.”

Ser John looked up in surprise. “My pardon, my lord duke, but the chatter in the market is that the Emperor is bankrupt and cannot field an army.”

The Duke of Thrake smiled mirthlessly. “What do you think we were doing last year?” he asked. “Dancing? The Empire has a field army. It will be at Middleburg.”

Ser Thomas slammed a fist on the great table. “I like what I’m hearing,” he said. “I like the notion of the fight this season and not next. But I have my herds to move, and most of the tail of my best men is with me. I can send a man home to muster levies, but until the drove is over-”

“I mislike the idea of keeping an army in the field all summer,” Lord Wayland said. “We’re not the Emperor with an army all the year. Fields must be ploughed. My archers are my yeomen. My spearmen are my herdsmen.” He shrugged.

Next to him, the Grand Squire grinned and nodded. “I wouldn’t mind a season of campaigning,” he quipped. “But my people would. And my wife, come to think of it.”

“A shirt of mail is a year’s lost herds.” The Bishop of Albinkirk spoke seldom, but he spoke well.

Ser John looked at Ser Gabriel. “Can you command the Emperor’s army?” he asked.

Ser Gabriel looked at his hands. “Yes,” he said.

Ser Alcaeus was seen to smile.

“Then let us build a force here, based on your company and Ser Ricar’s. I’m sure we can pay your wages.” He looked at the merchants, who flinched.

Ser Gabriel shook his head. “I’ll pay my own,” he said. “I’m the Duke of Thrake. I had other plans, but I’ll put them aside for the summer. We can keep the northern levies and the Hill clans as our reserve.”

“But what of the Royal Army?” Ghause asked, too sweetly.

Ser John frowned. “I do not think we can rely on the Royal Army this summer,” he said primly. “I don’t think we will see them north of Harndon.” He sighed. “Or if we do, we may rue it.” He looked around. “I would rather not speak all my thoughts than lie. But unless I am mistaken, the Royal Army will not save us this year.”

“Because of raids in the south?” the Etruscan merchant asked.

“Because Alba is on the brink of a civil war,” the bishop said quietly.

Ser John leaned back. “We are all king’s men here,” he said. “We will be the Royal Army.”

Ser Alcaeus looked as if he was going to choke.

Ser Gabriel frowned. “We will be an allied army of the north. If the Emperor contributes troops, he will not want to be seen as a vassal of the King of Alba.”

The Duchess of Westwall nodded. “Well said, my son. We are allies, not feudatories. Let that be clear.” She looked around-more like the griffon than was quite right. “Consider this, gentles-if the Royal Army cannot help us, and if we must raise our own army to hold back this petty sorcerer, what will we do when a serious threat comes? Why pay our taxes to a distant king who cannot defend us? Why not have our own king?”

Ser John sat up straighter, and looked at the duchess. “I beg your pardon, your grace, but are you contending that the Earl of Westwall is not the vassal of the King? Are you suggesting…”

The duchess smiled. It was the sort of smile one might imagine on a particularly subtle fox just before he eats the chicken. “I am a poor weak woman with no great head for politics, Ser John. I speak no treason when I say that my brother cannot defend us. His writ does not run here.” She smiled, and her smile narrowed. “I merely tell you, brave knights, that neither my husband, nor I, will be bound by a document or an agreement that decribes us as the king’s vassals or requires our knight service. On the other hand, if such an agreement is worded as an alliance, we will eagerly contribute to both the field army and to the total effort and the costs.”

The Bishop of Albinkirk narrowed his eyes. “You see the Adnacrags as a sovereign county?” he asked.

The smile that the duchess wore grew, if anything, a little wider. “I have said no such thing,” she said. “Yet, I imagine that were we to make ourselves sovereign, we would only aid our own defence.”

“This is treason,” the bishop said.

“Make the most of it,” the duchess snapped.

“We owe our service to the king-” Ser John began.

“Why?” Ghause asked. “He’s just a man-and a feckless one. The way I hear it, my son and Sophie saved you all last spring. The way I hear it, the King almost lost his army in the woods and had to be saved by his slut of a Queen and the river fleet. And now he’s let in an army of Galles who are running rough-shod over the south. I’m here to tell you that we will not allow them into the north.” She sat back.

Lord Wayland’s eye went to hers. He said nothing, but his cautious expression betrayed his interest.

The young Master of Dorling shook his head like a man shaking off sleep. “My da holds our place from the Wyrm,” he said. “I am not the king’s man, and saving your grace, I’m not your man, either.” He looked around. “I like the notion of alliance, but I have nothing to say about any new kingdom except a word of advice: only a fool changes horses in mid-stream.”

The duchess’s head went back like that of an angry horse.

Ser Alcaeus nodded. “I think I might speak,” he said quietly, “for all of us who are not Albans-and say that this talk of a kingdom in the north is immoderate. I think that if it continues, my Emperor would require that I withdraw. I must say on his behalf that Thrake is a province in the Empire, and that Ser Gabriel’s possession of it is at the Emperor’s pleasure. The Empire does not function as a set of infeudations, nor are our lands inheritable without the Emperor’s permission, my lords. The Emperor owns everything. He can grant or remove any title at any time.”

Ghause smiled poisonously. “Does that include the Emperor’s throne, ser knight? Is it not held by right of inheritance?”

Ser Alcaeus looked surprised. “The Emperor is chosen by God,” he said.

“Usually after a lot of poisoning and knife fights,” Ser Gabriel said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, your grace, but the north is not ready to have a sovereign kingdom.”

“Then the north is full of fools,” Ghause said. “Ask your imperial riding officers-ask anyone who lives on the wall! There’s as many people north of the wall as south. There’s towns north of the wall. All of them could be ours!”

Her son shook his head. “Yours, you mean. I’m sorry, your grace, but our intention is the protection of our estates-not the raising of a new banner in the Game of Kings.”

Ghause sat back and sniffed. “Well,” she said. She smiled. “We’ll see, then, won’t we?”

While every leader present was willing enough in principle, every side room in the citadel seemed to have two or three great lords discussing, debating, and often enough, shouting. If Ghause had intended to divide the council of the northern lords, she had succeeded to perfection.

“Your lady mother cannot imagine that we’d sign away the king’s rights to the whole of the north country!” Ser John said to the Red Knight. Now that he knew the boy was the Earl of Westwall’s son, he found his infernal arrogance easier to stomach-the more because the boy seemed to have grown a little more human in the past year.

The new Duke of Thrake sat with his back against the oak panelling of Ser John’s private study. “Neither the earl nor the duchess has ever had much time for the king,” he said slowly. “And it hasn’t troubled you before. Or has it?”

Ser John was pacing up and down. “I will share my thoughts, my lord. Last year-during the siege-we received no succor but yours and, in the end, the Royal Army. We had no help of your parents. I confess I am less than pleased-indeed, I’m bitter.” He pointed at the great hall. “At least the King came. The earl was five days away, and he never twitched.”

Ser Gabriel rolled some good Etruscan wine over his tongue and looked out the window, where sheets of rain were filling the creeks and making the task of the field army more difficult and vastly more uncomfortable.

“But you have asked me to command,” Ser Gabriel said.

“You are the most famous commander in Nova Terra just now,” Ser John said.

“And the Westwall heir,” Ser Gabriel added, a nasty note in his voice.

Ser John swirled wine in his silver cup and then turned to face the younger knight. “Yes. Why hide it? Surely your mother will sign and your father will commit if you are to have the command?”

Ser Gabriel shook his head. “I truly doubt it. I’m sorry, Ser John. I’m still under contract to the Emperor. As the Emperor’s man-I have no feudal obligations at all in Alba-I would be willing to command your field force after I return from the tournament, but it is not vital to me. In fact, to me it looks like a summer of brutally hard work for no money and little thanks.”

Ser John managed a smile. “You describe my whole tenure as Captain of Albinkirk.”

Gabriel rose. “Ser John, I agree that having a mobile force to face the Wild is a necessary evil. I will command it for a summer-and pay my own wages from my tithe as Duke of Thrake. I will do this whatever the Earl of Westwall chooses to do. I will leave most of my people here with you. But I will not make the least effort to convince the earl or my mother to join this alliance, and can offer you no counsel about them.”

Ser John stood, too.

“Where do you think Thorn will strike?” he asked.

Ser Gabriel shook his head. “Middleburg would have been weak had I lost in the east. But I didn’t, and now it is very strong. Albinkirk-let us be realistic. Albinkirk has a solid captain and a small army-and is close to Lissen Carak and a magnificent array of magisters who have, since last spring’s near disaster, come into their own.”

“The nuns?” Ser John asked.

“Yes. I’d be very surprised indeed if Thorn tried again there. Were he to re-invest Albinkirk and Lissen Carak he would have to do both together, would he not?”

Ser John had not considered this. “Ah-yes. Because leaving either one would leave a force operating behind his siege lines. Bah-you are the right man to command.”

“I have read some very good books. The Archaics thought deeply about war, Ser John. At any rate, he would have to divide his efforts, whatever solution he chose, and the morale consequence of a second failure in the same place would probably be disastrous for his forces.”

Ser John smiled. “I just make war. I see you think about it.”

Ser Gabriel shrugged. “That leaves Ticondaga-it’s the most exposed. Or he might strike west, into the upper lakes country, and spend the summer gathering allies. There is a rumour that he and the Faery Knight quarrelled over the winter. Do not imagine that the Wild is a unified force. And luckily for us, the more puissant he grows, the more likely it is that other Powers in the Wild will try to drag him down.”

“Try to drag him down?” John said. “You are leaving something unsaid, I think.”

Ser Gabriel leaned close. “I think perhaps he has… help.”

“Saints alive!” Ser John said. “Saint Maurice and Saint George, my lord. You speak of the Enemy?”

Somehow, that old name for Satan made Ser Gabriel smile. “Perhaps I do. The sorcerer is, at least, more dangerous than the sum of his parts.” He leaned back. “This is not something to be discussed aloud.”

Ser John nodded. “I thank you for your confidence,” he growled.

“His help will not keep other Powers in the Wild from contesting with him,” Ser Gabriel said.

“So you think we might get through this summer untouched!” Ser John said.

Ser Gabriel gave a thin smile with no mirth whatsoever. “If we do, it will only be because he has chosen to make himself far more powerful for next spring. And if he does, I have no idea where he might strike.” Gabriel settled back against the wood panelling. If he had intended to leave, he had changed his mind.

“You think Ticondaga then?” Ser John asked.

“I think it is the most exposed fortress we have; its lord and lady do not really desire to cooperate with the rest of us, it is the strategic key to the lakes and the inner sea, and despite its reputation for invulnerability, it is overlooked by Mount Grace.” Ser Gabriel shrugged. “And-do you really want to face an army of the Wild in the deep woods?”

Ser John nodded. “You are very persuasive. And the Galles?”

Ser Gabriel frowned. “I confess I cannot fathom what they are about. But with a Galle knight at the king’s court and another leading an army in the far north-” he waved a hand. “Jean de Vrailly is…”

“Insane?” Ser John asked.

The Red Knight raised an eyebrow. “Your words, my lord captain.”

Ser John nodded emphatically. “I mislike the man, and Ser Ricar detests him.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “You understand that if Alba is indeed tipped towards civil war, Thorn”-he seemed to savour the name-“might be our salvation.”

It was Ser John’s turn to frown. “Why?”

“Because if he strikes into a civil war, every baron will unite against him under the king, and that will be the end of it.” Ser Gabriel spoke with all the arrogant satisfaction that made him so easy to loathe. He made it sound as if he’d planned the whole thing.

Ser John put his wine cup down.

“Come, Ser John,” Ser Gabriel said. “Let’s put our crooked dice away and speak like honest men. It is civil war that you fear, and not the sorcerer in the north. And you want to know where I stand, where the Westwalls stand, where the Brogat barons stand.”

Ser John’s eyes narrowed. “If the King were to send de Vrailly north to collect taxes as he did in Jarsay last summer, we’d have a war right here.” He frowned. “Your lady mother said as much.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “I thought that’s what you feared. It is certainly what the duchess fears-she’s more interested in laying the claims to her own sovereignty than in facing the sorcerer.”

“Where do you stand?” Ser John asked.

Ser Gabriel met his eyes. “As the Duke of Thrake? Or as a sell-sword?” He smiled. “Nay-I’ll answer honestly. I despise de Vrailly. But there’s no reason behind it. I met him, and I know him.” The Red Knight leaned back and sipped wine. “So are you really assembling a northern army to face de Vrailly?”

“God between us and evil!” Ser John spat. “I would never fight against the king, no matter how misguided he might be. But if I can build a force in the north, I’ll tell the King that the northern army is his taxes ‘in kind’ and give de Vrailly no excuse to march here.”

The Red Knight raised his goblet and toasted his companion. “Well thought out. I missed it-a fine gambit.” He sat back, savouring the wine and the idea together. “On that understanding, perhaps I’ll modify my course and approach my mother.” He smiled, clearly pleased. “For everyone’s benefit.”

“I can see through a brick wall in time,” Ser John grumbled, but he was pleased. “Now-when you go south, will you take my writ and gain the king’s appointment? And you see why I must have your lady mother’s agreement as a vassal and not as an ally?”

Ser Gabriel closed his eyes and frowned. “Damn,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

A day later-the hour after dawn, and the spring sun was the warm, golden colour that men remembered in mid-winter. It sparkled on the muddy puddles that lay at the corners of fields, where snow had lain just a few days before. Ser Ricar’s messengers brought word-a day of constant fighting, but no organized foe, and the roads both north and south of the fords were clear.

For an entire day, the duchess hinted that sovereignty was her price for alliance, and most of the other lords refused to discuss what was to some treason, and to others irrelevant.

In the great hall, for the Red Knight a day that had begun well with Ser John proved trying. His mother refused to discuss vassalage; she was using the council to press her claims to a kingdom, and her pretensions were scaring the Brogat barons. By dinner, she was flirting outrageously with Lord Wayland, whose slow and cautious politics were in danger of being overwhelmed by the main force of a low-cut gown and a pair of flashing eyes.

After dinner, Ser Gabriel sent a note by means of Nell, and then went in person to his mother’s door. The bronze-eyed girl opened it and bade him welcome, her cool, demure voice oddly at odds with her body and eyes.

“Your lady mother bids you wait, sir knight,” she said.

Ser Gabriel bowed distantly and sat in a chair in the solar. He leafed through an illustrated breviary; he picked up a very prettily inlaid lute and started to play an old troubadour song, and found it wildly out of tune.

He began to tune it.

Time passed.

A string broke and Ser Gabriel cursed.

Bronze-eyes smiled prettily.

There were noises on the other side of his mother’s door, but none that made any sense, and eventually, having found a set of strings inside the belly of the instrument, having stripped the offending string, which had been the wrong-sized gut all along, having replaced the string and then tuned the instrument to its intended range and not the very odd tuning that his mother had arranged, he played Prende I Garde.

“You are splendid!” Bronze-eyes said, enthusiastically. She clapped her hands together.

Ser Gabriel rose. “Please tell my mother I was most pleased to have this opportunity to tune her instrument, and she may call on me at any time.” He handed the lute to the servant girl. She dropped a beautiful curtsey.

“If there is anything I might do to help you pass the time,” she whispered.

He paused. And sighed. “Have a pleasant eve,” he bade her, and passed the door.

He considered going to the great hall and joining the men there. He considered inflicting his anger and his annoyance on strangers.

He even paused outside the chapel, where he saw a straight-backed nun in the gown of the Order kneeling at the altar. He stood and watched her.

She didn’t turn her head.

Eventually, he took his irritation to his own rooms. Toby and Nell stayed out of arm’s reach, and with the assistance of two cups of wine, he managed to get to bed.

To the ceiling over his bed, he said, “I prefer fighting.”

Then he lay and felt the fracture in his leg throb. He lay there with the pain, and thought about life and death and Father Arnaud. And Thorn, and his master, and where it all had to end. He was beginning to see the end. He lay, and imagined it.

Eventually he began to consider his miraculous survival of the recent ambush. That gave him the opportunity to savour each error he had made in the course of the fight-committing the knights too early, over-powering his emergency shields so that they drained him of power. Allowing an oak tree to fall on him.

He shook his head in the darkness.

At some point in the night he began to consider the constant flow of ops that had trickled to him while he lay awaiting death.

He heard Toby toss on the straw pallet at his feet.

Ser Gabriel considered many things, and eventually, his annoyance increased by each new thought, he entered into his memory palace and walked along the floor.

Prudentia nodded coolly. “You remind me of an unruly boy I knew once,” she said.

“Are you simply magicked to say these things? Did he invest you with some particular ability to assess my thoughts and make suitable witticisms?”

Prudentia’s blank ivory eyes seemed to glance at him. “I believe my re-creator discovered that a great many of my habits of thought were overlaid on your memories and he retrieved them.”

“Well,” the Red Knight said. “Well.” He went to the door to Harmodius’s palace. “I need to see something from another angle.” He opened the door and went in.

It was dustier than before. Now that he thought about it, he realized what the old man must have done. Because somewhere in his memories, he must hold Prudentia’s palace. And that suggested that if he spent too much time here, in Harmodius’s memories, he might-just possibly-be in danger of either becoming the old man or empowering some sort of simulacrum of him.

“Not what I’m here for,” he said.

He went and stood in front of the mirror.

In the reflection, he seemed to be wearing a ring of fire, and around his right ankle was a golden band. The band was joined to a chain.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

Eventually, he must have slept, because he awoke, his eyes feeling as if they were made of parchment and his mouth dry and his head throbbing. He lay, listening to Toby lay things out on the chest at the foot of the bed, and then the scale of his disaster and the throbbing of his right leg coincided, and he rose into the chilly air, his mood already savage.

He dressed quickly, and Toby kept his head averted. The boy’s fear of him angered him further. He could sense his own failure to modify his temper.

At some remove, he didn’t care.

“Where’s Nell?” he asked.

“Stables, your grace.” Toby was not usually so formal. “Shall I send for her?”

“No,” the captain said. He sat and stewed. He knew what he had around his ankle, in the aethereal. He knew it was very powerful, and he suspected he knew where it came from.

Nell came in.

“Message for you, your grace,” she said.

Nell brought him a note, and he read it at his own table. His colour heightened and his face went blank.

“Wine,” he said.

It was early morning, and Toby frowned.

“I’m sorry, Toby, is there a problem?” Ser Gabriel asked in his most poisonous voice.

Toby glanced at Nell, who, having handed over the note, was busy sorting clean laundry in the press. Toby stood up straight. “I have hippocras,” he said, and went to the fire.

“I asked for wine,” the captain said. “Hippocras has all the spirit boiled out.”

“May I say-” Toby began with all the dignity a seventeen-year-old can muster.

Ser Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said. “Your opinion is not required.”

Toby reached for a wine bottle, but Nell reached out and tipped it on the floor.

It smashed.

Before the pieces were done moving, the captain was out of his chair and had Nell by the throat. “I asked for wine,” he hissed. “Not adolescent criticism.”

She looked at him, eyes wide.

He let her go slowly.

Nell shook herself and glanced at Toby, who had his hand on his dagger.

The captain sighed-a long sigh, like the air hissing out of a dead man’s lungs. Without apology, he stepped out into the hall.

He didn’t slam the door.

He didn’t get a cup of wine, either.

Gabriel was almost insensible to the world around him as he stalked along the tower’s outer hall and down the winding stairs, so angry at himself that he could barely breathe. He walked through the great hall without acknowledging anyone, and brushed past his mother without a word.

She smiled.

He paid her no heed, but walked out into the muddy yard and collected his riding horse, saddled by a pair of frightened grooms, and mounted. His anger communicated itself instantly to the horse, who began to fidget.

“Perhaps if you were to hit it very hard,” came a soft voice from the gloom of the stable.

At the sound of her voice, his rage drained away, leaving him merely-deflated.

He turned the horse. The yard was almost empty, and his Morean page, Giorgos, was the only one of his own people in the stable.

“I got your note,” he said.

“And it lightened your mood?” Amicia said, emerging from the shadows with a palfrey’s reins in her right hand. “Shall we delight your lady mother by riding out into the spring sun?”

“Only if we come back with our clothes all muddy,” Ser Gabriel said. His breathing was coming short, as if he’d been in a fight. “I’m sorry that she used you for the griffon.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

Amicia mounted, throwing her leg over the saddle like a man. It was neither ladylike nor elegant, although it did show a fine flash of leg. It reminded Ser Gabriel that Sister Amicia had not been raised a gentle, and was largely self-taught. At everything. Including the casting of complex sorceries.

“People will talk,” he said, trying to find a light-hearted note. “If we ride without an escort.”

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” she said in passable Gallish.

They rode out into a brisk day, with a hint of old winter in every shadow and a kiss of spring in the bright sunshine. She wore her hood up until they were clear of the gates of the town, and then she threw it back, and her rich brown hair was blown free of her wimple in seconds by the stiff north wind. She caught the wimple before it whipped free, like a flag in a storm, and tucked it into her bosom.

She smiled. “Do you know how long those things take to sew?” she asked. “I can’t lose one.”

Ser Gabriel could not fail to meet her smile. “I see you are learning to embroider,” he said. “La Belle Soeur de Forêt Sauvage. Doesn’t it bore you?”

“Oh, no!” she said, with delight. “No, I relish it. It is like going to mass. So-calming. Time to think. I have done a great deal of thinking this winter-since I met your mother.”

Gabriel sighed. “Yes?” he asked. He noted, at some remove, that his hands were shaking.

She looked at him. “And you?”

He pursed his lips. “I have thought a great deal,” he said.

She laughed. “It is easy to plot and devise other people’s lives, is it not? So much easier than working on your own.” She turned her horse at a side road short of the bridge. “Come, Gabriel. We are going to talk about the rest of our lives.”

Gabriel reined in his horse. “Amicia,” he said. His voice rose in pitch.

She looked back. “Gabriel. Let us get this done.”

He sat, his horse unmoving. He was silent for so long that she had to wonder where his head was, and then he said, his voice strained, “I think you should just say it. I don’t need to ride off into the copse of woods to hear it.”

“On the highway?” she asked.

“Amicia,” he said, and he paused. He looked away.

She turned her horse back. “I don’t want to be interrupted,” she said.

Slowly, as if against his will, his horse followed hers.

They rode another league, until they came to a small chapel. It was not quite a ruin-the stones were green with moss, the roof of slate was still supported by its ancient wooden beams, but it sagged in the middle. The altar stone was still solid, and there were bunches of snowdrops on it. Inside, it was pleasant enough-brisk, but not wintry, and the odour of incense mixed with a flat mossy smell.

Gabriel saw to their horses and followed the nun into the chapel. At the door, he paused.

“I’m gathering that you are not bringing me here to succumb to my worldly advances,” he said.

“That sounds more like the man I knew at the siege,” she said. She went to the altar and kindled a small fire, lit two candles and placed them on the altar. Almost instantly, the candles made the small space seem dryer and more homey.

Then she drew a stool from behind the altar and sat. “I come here often,” she said. “The light is good.”

“And it is full of power,” he said.

“And God’s light,” she said.

Their eyes met. Hers were brown, and his were green, and each looked far too long, so that the silence grew uncomfortable, and then stretched to a flinching unease and through it.

In the aethereal, they stood on her bridge, with the clear waters of the Wild flowing under it and the golden light of the sun pouring down through a clearing in the trees. In her palace, the trees had the full and dusty green leaves of late summer.

“We didn’t need to ride out of the fortress to do this,” he said.

Amicia did not wear a robe and gown in the palace, but a tight green kirtle. “I wanted you to have time,” she said. “Everyone has ambushed you this week. I was not going to be one of them.”

Gabriel was in red; he leaned on her bridge. “I think you have brought me here to break off,” he said. “And I think the ambush is of some duration.”

She smiled. “Love-love, what break can there be between two sorcerous mortals who can walk in and out of each other’s minds?”

Gabriel smiled as if she’d said something very different. “So linked that their ops pass back and forth without volition?” He didn’t look at her. “Why didn’t you come with me, Amicia?”

“I had other duties. I made a different decision.” Her ambiguity was redoubled in the aethereal.

“Amicia.” He turned and met her look-in the aethereal. “I’m pretty sure that you agreed to come with me and be my wife.”

She shrugged. “I did. And I was wrong to, and I wronged you. But in taking my vows, I was true to myself. And I do not regret my vows.” She smiled sadly. “I will never be your wife. Nor your leman. There, it is said. Again.”

“Did I have to come here to have you say it?” he asked. “Or are you just one of those people who needs to be convinced?”

He stepped forward, his eyes hungry, and she stopped him. His reaching arms caught nothing.

“In the real,” she said, “you can overcome both my body and my will. Here, I am your peer.”

Baulked, his eyes flashed red and his rage was writ plain.

And then he stepped back and all but hissed.

“Love,” she said. “Do you need my body? Is this a matter of love, or mastery? Is it that my Jesus blocks your mighty will? Why can you not be satisfied with this? How many mighty powers stand in each other’s heads and talk? It is more intimate than any lovemaking.”

Gabriel leaned back against the railing of the bridge.

“I wondered if you would allow me into your palace,” he said.

“Why would I not?” she asked.

“Because of what you would hide from me,” he said. “It’s obvious here, is it not?” As he spoke, he pointed to his feet.

A tiny tendril, like a wisp of hair, tailed away from his right heel and fell away into the rushing water below.

Amicia put a hand to her neck.

Gabriel nodded. “At least twice, when I should have died-should absolutely, unequivocally have been dead-I have not died. The most recent occasion was so obvious that I had to know the cause.” He smiled. “I knew we were linked by the ring. But the ring merely covers something, doesn’t it?”

Amicia found it difficult to avoid his eyes. In fact, no matter where she turned, he seemed to be standing with his arms crossed.

“Why have you ensorcelled me?” he asked.

Amicia raised her head. “I cannot speak of it. What is done, is done.”

“There speaks the language of love.” He snorted.

She coloured.

He left her for the real.

“I brought you here,” she said icily, “to tell you some things.”

He smiled at her. Even in his current state, just to look at her warmed him. But he held up his hand. “I don’t think I want to hear them. Amicia-for whatever reason we are joined-you know me better than many. Or at least, I imagine you know me well. And I have to tell you that just now, I’m at my limit. I don’t need to know any more. I need to deal with my mother, and go to Harndon. In a week, or a month, or a year, if we are both alive, I would ask that we have this conversation again. And that you release me from your spell. But not, I hope, your love.” He smiled. “You needed no spell to hold me.”

“Hold you? Damn you and your arrogance,” she said. “I have made my vows.”

“My dear, girls leave convents every day. What kind of God would demand your chastity like a jealous lover? If you wish to commit to your God, be my guest, but don’t hide behind your vows.” He smiled. “There. I, too, have thought and thought. And those are the words I say to you.” He took his gloves out of his belt. “I love you, Amicia. But…” He paused, and bit his lip.

Amicia shrugged. “My answer will be the same. You should marry the Morean princess.”

He stopped moving.

“Irene. We all expected you to marry her. Even your own people expected it. Did she have warts or something? I understand that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world-at least, I’ve heard it said.” Amicia smiled. “I really just want you to be happy.”

“So you have placed a mighty working on me?” Gabriel said.

Amicia shrugged.

“Can you remove it?” he asked. “I tried last night and failed.”

“Let me set this out for you,” she said like a schoolmistress for a not-very-bright pupil. “You accuse me of casting some praxis that is protecting you from death. And you’d like it removed.” Her arch tone was almost contemptuous.

His anger flared. “No one else can do this to me,” he spat. “Damn you. But yes. Take it away.”

“Your mother can do this to you,” Amicia said. “I spent a day with her and you know what? I liked her. I found that we agreed on some surprising things. For example, we both agreed that you needed to be protected.” Amicia took a deep breath. “And for this I’m to be damned?”

Gabriel paused.

“You still have a healthy element of small boy in you, shouting I can do it myself. And in many ways you can. But-”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Amicia, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. My mother is not-anyone’s friend. Even her own. She is a Power.”

Amicia nodded, lips pursed and eyes narrowed almost to slits. “Gabriel Muriens, I am a Power.” She stood. “Just when you begin to woo me successfully-and you do, the mere sight and sound of you, as God is my witness-your overbearing-” She stopped. “You do yourself no favours. I am not a girl. I am not witless. I can, in fact, heal the sick, and make fire rain from the sky.”

He looked away. “I am not the only arrogant fool here,” he said. He went to the doorway. “I thought we’d go for a ride. And perhaps kiss. And maybe you’d tell me why you’ve placed a working on me. And I’d forgive you.” He shook his head. “Instead, I have to at least consider that you and my mother are working together on whatever fool scheme she’s devised for my future as the messiah of the Wild. I find that hard to credit, but if it is the case-”

“Forgive me?” she asked. Despite her best efforts, tears burst from her eyes. “You would forgive me for saving your life?” She looked at him, shaking her head. “And you think I’m plotting with the Wild?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You idiot,” she said.

He took a trembling breath and stepped forward.

She straight-armed his advance. “Go,” she said.

She heard him mount his horse. And she heard him say, “Fuck,” quite loudly and distinctly, and then he rode away, and she gave vent to a year’s worth of frustrated tears.

Ser Gabriel appeared in the great hall just before noon. He was a trifle muddy and more reserved than usual, and Ser John beat him at chess so easily he felt the other man must be distracted.

“I’m not myself,” the Red Knight said, although the acerbity with which he said it made him seem very much himself. “I intend to take my household and depart in the morning.”

Ser John started. “By God, Ser Gabriel,” he said. “I had counted on you for the rest of the council.”

Ser Gabriel shook his head. “I need to get to Harndon. The tournament is what-nineteen days away? I’d like to have a rest and a chance to do a little politicking before I cross lances with anyone. You can plan the logistics of the mobile force as well as I-better for knowing the suppliers. I need to be anywhere but here.”

Ser John raised both eyebrows. “I am sorry. Has my hospitality gone awry?”

Ser Gabriel managed a good smile. “Nothing of the sort. You are a fine host. I brought my own black mood with me.” He frowned. “I still need to discuss the agreement with the duchess.”

He sent young Giorgos, who went and returned.

In his flawless High Archaic, the young man said, “The despoina is closeted with the good sister,” he said. “The duchess is no doubt making her confession.”

“No doubt,” the Red Knight said. He rose, bowed and went out into the yard.

Bad Tom was cutting at a pell.

Ser Gabriel sent Giorgos for his war sword and went to the next pell, displacing a dozen other men who, in one look, decided to do their training elsewhere. He attacked the pell ferociously, and then, with a poleaxe, more pragmatically, raising splinters and then cutting them away.

Tom redoubled his efforts for a while, perfectly willing to compete at pell destruction.

But wood chips were not particularly satisfying, and Bad Tom grinned. “Care for a dust-up?” he asked.

The Red Knight tossed his weapon to Giorgos. Without further words, he stripped his doublet, opening the lacings as fast as his fingers would go.

Ser Michael came out of the back of the stables.

“Cap’n’s going to wrestle with Bad Tom,” Cully said. “Household’s marching tomorrow.” He raised an eyebrow. “His leg still hurt?”

Ser Michael nodded. “Not all that’s hurting, by all accounts,” he said. “We can’t leave tomorrow,” he said.

Out on the sand, Tom and Gabriel, naked to the waist, were circling.

They came together. The captain took one of Tom’s arms, and Tom wrapped him in a tight embrace and held him tenderly.

“You good?” he asked. He hadn’t even bothered to throw the smaller man.

Ser Gabriel leaped away. Then he attacked.

He landed a fist, and Bad Tom bent lower, and the expression of mild pleasure on his face changed to one of joyous ferocity.

“Uh-oh,” Ser Michael said to Toby.

Toby, who was packing armour, sighed.

Tom threw the captain, face first. Ser Gabriel rolled, but Tom was atop him, and caught an arm and forced him to the ground. “Yield,” Tom said.

But he was a second too soon. Ser Gabriel turned inside the grab and spun under Tom’s arm, avoiding the dislocation of his shoulder.

Tom locked his arms around the captain’s head and rocked him back and forth gently. He took a step back. “Yield,” he said again.

Ser Gabriel swung his feet forward in a way that made his friends wince for his neck, got a purchase, and tried to free his head.

Tom let him go.

Quick as a viper, the captain got an arm under Tom’s left arm, passed his head through, and went for the throw.

Bad Tom bellowed in real rage and hooked Ser Gabriel’s foot, kneed him ungently in the balls and dropped him on the ground. In the process he put his knee behind the captain’s knee.

“You stupid fuck,” Bad Tom bellowed, sweat and spittle dripping off him. “I could ha’ maimed you for life. I had your fewkin’ head in a lock. I might hae snapped your fewkin’ neck. And you would na’ yield. What sport is that?”

Ser Gabriel lay on the sand, face up, his hands clasped between his legs, panting. His right leg lay at an odd angle.

“Damn me. I didna’ mean to hurt you, you loon.” Tom reached down and grabbed the captain’s hand.

Ser Gabriel allowed the Hillman to drag him to his feet, and then he screamed and fell.

He came to almost immediately.

Gabriel gave Tom a shaky smile. “Oh, yes. Let the punishment fit the crime.”

Ser Michael brought him cold water, and he drank.

He met Michael’s eyes.

“You had that coming,” Michael said.

“What’s the matter?” Bad Tom asked. “The little nun? She’s coming.”

Before he was done speaking, Sister Amicia bustled into the yard, her wimple flapping like the wings of a sea bird. She had two other sisters at her shoulders.

She glared about her with disapproval. Bad Tom shrank away. Ser Michael stood his ground.

“Ser Gabriel has re-broken his leg,” he said.

Amicia knelt by the Red Knight, who lay on his back. She ran her hands over his leg and leaned down.

“I must have your word that you will not endanger my healing or refuse God’s gift,” she said, quite clearly. “For a week.”

Gabriel’s face worked, and no sound emerged.

Ser Michael leaned in. “He agrees,” Michael said.

She joined hands with the other nuns, and the three of them sang-a polyphony. And Amicia’s voice soared over their quieter, lower voices, up and on.

When she was done, every man in the yard was on his knees. She smiled. “Don’t let him break it again,” she said.

She rose. Gabriel watched her silently.

In his memory palace, she stood by Prudentia. “I have healed you. But you can’t be so foolish.”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry, Gabriel. I-”

He raised a hand. “I’m sorry, too. But I’m not ready to talk more.”

Her head snapped back. But she continued to smile at him. And slipped away with her two serving sisters.

With Bad Tom on one side and Ser Michael on the other, Gabriel made it to his feet and hobbled to the bench.

“She’s a force,” Bad Tom said, placing his charge on the bench.

“She’s not so little,” Gabriel said. He felt better-for no reason.

Tom laughed. “Not where it matters, anyway. If you’d taken my advice during the siege-”

“The advice that I rape her?” the captain asked. Ser Michael caught his breath.

“Rape is a strong word,” Bad Tom said. He scratched his beard. “Some ladies like a little persuading. Like horses.”

Ser Gabriel drank a dipper full of cold water and spat a little blood. “I don’t think that would have worked,” he said.

Bad Tom looked out over the great north woods. “Aye. It doesn’t always work.” He grinned. “But it can save a mort of time.”

Ser Gabriel looked at his friend. “Tom, what would you do if a lady pushed you to the ground and stuck her tongue in your mouth?”

Ser Michael snorted.

Tom snorted. “Is this something philosophical? Because by our lady, I promise you that will never happen here in the world.” More soberly, he sighed. “But I take your point.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Michael took Toby by the elbow and hauled him out of the small side-yard where the pells stood.

“She said no,” Tom said, with a glance at Michael’s retreating back.

“She’s working with my mother,” Gabriel said.

Tom shrugged. “Who cares? You love her?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Well, then, bide your time.”

Gabriel laughed. “I’m getting advice on love from a Hillman.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Well, laddy, I might point out that I have a fearsome record of lovers and you, as far as I know, seem to miss more than you make. You might do better than take my advice.” He looked at the smaller man. “I reckon there’s been mayhap twenty nights in the last hundred I haven’t had a woman to warm my bed. Most of them would do’t again. Hae you done as well?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I’m not sure this is a matter where a high score indicates victory, but very well. Your advice is?”

“This castle is full of lasses who would jump in the blankets with ye for a song. For a look and a smile. The bronze-eyed vixen as waits on your lady mother…”

“Your advice is that I can win the love of a nun by fornicating with my mother’s maid?” Gabriel asked.

Tom smiled lazily. “Aye. That sums it up nicely.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I need to talk to my mother. I’m just avoiding my duty.” He got up. “Thanks for the fight. I’m sorry I cheated. I’m angry.”

“Oh, aye,” Tom said. “I’d never hae guessed.” He put an arm around the younger man. “Best rid yourself o’it.”

“Of what?” Gabriel asked.

“Father Arnaud’s death,” Tom said. “He’s dead. He died well. All glory to him. And you know what’s wrong wi’ you? You want to be God. You want to hae saved him. An’ you did not. He died.”

Gabriel sighed.

“Let him go. And while yer at it, stop trying to be God.” Tom smiled. “I confess ye do it better than many. But Arnaud went his own road. He’s gone.” Very softly, he said, “You want me to find you a willing lass?”

Gabriel laughed. He wheezed a little, and finally rose to his feet. “Is that your cure for everything?” he asked.

Tom nodded. “Pretty much. Sometimes…” He shook his head. “Sometimes ale helps. But not as much as a wench who wants ye.”

Gabriel got a step away when Tom rose. Gabriel turned.

“I read your plan,” Tom said.

“And?” Gabriel asked.

“I’m in. I don’t think I want to be Drover, anyway. I think that should be for Ranald.” He nodded. “I’ll sell the herd in Harndon. And then I want my job back. Do I need to kill Bescanon?”

Gabriel smiled. “No,” he said. “No, but Tom, sometimes I find it awfully refreshing to see the world from your eyes.”

“Aye,” Tom said. He grinned. “I like to keep things simple.”

He found his mother in her solar. She made him wait again, but she was alone.

“The nun won’t have you,” his mother said. “And you’ve ruined my lute. It was tuned to a casting pattern and now it is banal.”

Gabriel smiled and kissed his mother on the cheek. “The sele of the day to you, too, Mother.”

The bronze-eyed maid came in with wine and curtsied. Gabriel watched her with an appreciation whetted by Tom’s comments. She was remarkable. Gabriel had a suspicion that she had been prepared for him.

She blushed when her lowered eyes happened to intersect with Ser Gabriel’s.

“She won’t give up her vows. She’s after Sophie’s title.” Ghause laughed.

“What, to be the king’s mistress?” Gabriel asked. “I’m surprised. She’s never mentioned it.”

Ghause glared at her son, her eyes slightly mad, like the griffon’s. “She intends to be Abbess.”

“She told you this?” Gabriel asked. He was fascinated-mostly because his theory that Amicia was working with his mother was being shredded. By his mother. She could be a fine actress, but he didn’t think she could pull this off.

“Not in so many words,” his mother said, pouting.

Gabriel sat back. “You mean, Mother, that if you were in Amicia’s place, the only reason you would stay out of my bed would be to acquire more power.”

Ghause snarled, but her snarl became a laugh. “Fair eno’, my son. Now-you never came here of your own will.”

Gabriel nodded. “I want you to agree to the alliance-as vassals of the king.”

Ghause swore and stood. “Christ’s bloody crown of thorns, boy. I will not be my brother’s vassal for anything.”

“Even if doing so would avert civil war?” Gabriel asked.

“Better and better,” Ghause said. “Let him rot. Let him die.”

Gabriel sat back and crossed his legs. “I told him,” he said simply.

Ghause paused. She looked at her son for a long time, and then said slowly, “You told him-what?”

“I told him that I was your son. By him.” He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling.

Ghause rose slowly. “You what?”

Gabriel sighed. “I told him. I felt he needed to know.”

Ghause’s mouth moved, but no words came out.

Gabriel watched her. “I could go to court and present myself as the king’s bastard by his sister,” he said. “I suspect that would have an effect. I might even prevent the civil war. Perhaps he’d make me his heir!”

“You wouldn’t dare! I don’t want anything given by that bastard! I want him brought low!” Ghause was on her feet, her voice rising.

“You know, Mother, those may be things you want, but they are not things I want. If you want to destroy the king, you need to affect that on your own. I will not be your tool. And in the meantime, if you would like to please me, sign this agreement as the king’s vassal. In my turn, I’ll promise you-and your mate-my support as Duke of Thrake.”

Ghause pursed her lips. “No. I don’t give a fuck if you want to lie naked at his feet. Go-lick his arse for all I care.” She put a hand on the treaty, written out fine. “I will sign it, though. I’ll be a lickspittle and sign it as a vassal. I can repudiate it any time I like. Only make me one promise, and I’ll comply.”

Gabriel braced himself. “Does it involve murder?”

“No, marriage.” She sat again. “Marry the girl of my choice. I promise she’ll be handsome and have a good dowry and power. Give your word to marry her at my whim and I’ll sign your paper.”

Gabriel drew breath.

Ghause leaned towards him. “Forget your little nun. Or tumble her to your heart’s content when you’ve got your bride in kindle. I admit, for all her low birth, I like the nun. I think I could fancy her for myself.” She licked her lips. “What was wrong with the princess Irene?”

“You are the second person to ask me that today,” Gabriel said, a little wildly.

“Well?” his mother insisted.

“She tried to kill her father?” Gabriel said. “She poisons people?”

Ghause shrugged.

Gabriel sat back and laughed. “I confess, you’d like her, and you two would have so much to talk about over your sewing.”

Ghause met his eye. “You think I’m crude and vicious,” she said. “But yon princess is what she is. She is what her court has made her, and if you were a good knight and a good husband, she’d ha’ no need to poison you, would she?”

Gabriel put his face in his hands. “Is that the measure of wedded bliss?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Ghause said. “I’ve been with the Earl of Westwall for twenty years and more. And we ha’ not killed each other.” She snapped her fingers, and her maid returned and poured more wine. “Did the princess offer?”

Gabriel thought a moment. “No. Although I suspect that she will be offered-by her father. Soon.”

Ghause smiled. “And you have not said no?”

Gabriel thought again. “No.”

Ghause nodded. “You could be Emperor,” she said.

Gabriel nodded. “Yes. But no. The Empire does not transfer power by blood, and when the Emperor dies. Has it occurred to you that I don’t share your ambitions?”

She ignored him. “I’ll sign your paper, and you’ll take the bride I assign you. And no quibbles-I know you.”

Gabriel stood. “I’m tempted just to lie and agree. I think maybe I could save hundreds of lives by agreement. But you know, Mother, tonight I’m at my limit of being used by the powers of the world. So-no.” He picked up the parchment. “Won’t you just sign because you are the king’s vassal?”

She frowned. “It is nothing to you that he forced me-a chit of a girl, his own sister?”

Gabriel nodded. “Yes, Mother. For all that stands between us, I agree. I hate him, I think he’s false as a caitiff and that everything he’s ever done is poisoned by what he did to you.” He shrugged. “But-if all of us cling to our hates, we’ll never move forward. If that fool de Vrailly marches north this summer…”

“The earl will destroy him,” Ghause said with satisfaction.

Gabriel looked at her. Then he shrugged. “Very well, Mother. I think that you have chosen your road. And I have chosen mine.”

She frowned. “So you will not marry a girl for me?”

“Nor be party to any plot or plan of yours,” he said. “More, I’m going to go tell Ser John that I cannot accept command of the northern army. Given your stance, and the earl’s, the King would never agree to it.”

“Fine,” she said. “You won’t help me? Your own mother? Then go to hell, my son.” She blew him a kiss.

He went out through her solar with her curses ringing in his ears.

He went straight back to Ser John and dropped the parchment on his desk. “My apologies, Ser John. I cocked that up.”

The Captain of Albinkirk sighed. “She won’t sign?”

“She consigned me to hell.” Gabriel raised his hands.

“Damn. Your own mother.” Ser John shook his head.

Ser Gabriel spread his hands. “I must decline to be your commander, Ser John. I’ll leave you to puzzle out why.”

“Christ on the cross, your mother wants war with the king?” Ser John sat in shock.

Ser Gabriel said nothing. After a pause, he said, “As soon as the tournament is over, I’ll return to Morea. I promise you that if you call, the Emperor will send a force. I will probably not accompany it.”

“Damn. Damn and damn. Can you tell me why the duchess hates the king?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, Ser John.” He paused. “It’s not my story to tell.” He shook his head. “But she will not change her mind.”

Dinner in the great hall was a desperate affair. Sister Amicia sat silently, and her eyes never touched Ser Gabriel’s. The Duchess of Westwall alternated between crass and arch, and neither note struck home on her target, her son, who sat as isolated as a priest might be by an altar screen, alone with his thoughts. Ser John tried, and failed, to create a conversation. His efforts made it as far as the venison pie and then died, and the rest of the dinner passed in silence, punctuated by the duchess’s pro forma flirting with the now receptive Lord Wayland and her wilful ignoring of the Keeper’s son.

A pair of messengers arrived, both from Ser Ricar. Ser John went out to hear them, and the dinner broke up.

Gabriel watched Amicia for any sign he might speak to her. She chatted with the Drover as if she had no other need for company, and then she sat and played chess with her friend, the bishop.

His mother watched him with an intensity equal to the chess players.

Finally, Gabriel went to his room.

His leg hurt, and he hated everyone.

In the midst of undressing, he put a hand on Toby’s arm, and the young man mostly fought the urge to flinch.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” he said.

Toby flushed. And said nothing.

Morning-a cold, wet day that didn’t so much promise spring as hint vaguely at it. The rain seemed colder than snow, and the air was wet, and the wind bit through a wool cloak.

The Duke of Thrake rose early. He appeared in the great hall wearing a miniver riding gown that was worth a fortune-white wool embroidered in his arms on the outside and three hundred matched squirrel skins on the inside. He wore it over his harness.

Ser John’s squire, young Jamie, a Hoek boy, intercepted him. “Your grace,” he said with a bow. “The Captain of Albinkirk requests that you attend him. There is news.”

The Red Knight’s anger had leached away in a good night’s sleep and left him only throbbing pain and a nagging sense of loss. He bowed in return. “Lead me,” he said. He turned to Ser Michael. “Making my farewells won’t be quick. You might as well grab a sausage in the kitchen.”

Michael nodded, collected the Drover’s son, who wore his regalia over his harness, and found a side table covered in dishes.

Ser Gabriel followed Jamie out of the hall and into the barracks tower where the Captain of Albinkirk had his office.

Ser John was sitting in an old, black robe and was wearing spectacles. He had a bag on his desk, and opposite him sat a very young man wearing the golden belt of a knight.

The Red Knight smiled. “Ser Galahad!” he said. Galahad D’Acon had been one of the heroes of the fight at Lissen Carak.

“So kind of you to remember me, your grace,” the younger man said, rising so suddenly that his spurs tangled.

“Young Galahad comes as a royal messenger,” Ser John said. “He brought us several writs.” Ser John scratched his beard and straightened the spectacles on his nose.

“And to save my life,” Galahad said. He shook his head. “The queen’s knights…” He looked at Ser John. “She sent me herself. The Galles are killing our people, and the King does nothing to prevent it.” He clenched his fists. “They talk of arresting Lady Almspend.”

Ser John nodded. “You’ve had a difficult journey,” he said to the young knight. “Go get some food.”

As soon as Galahad was out the door and Jamie Le Hoek had closed it, Ser John turned, tapping a scroll on his teeth. “He was on the road for nine days. Bad weather and mud and too many convoys to pass.”

Ser Gabriel settled into the chair, still warm from the messenger’s heat.

“De Vrailly is going to formally accuse the queen of adultery,” he said. “As the king’s champion, he’ll accuse her.”

Ser Gabriel turned this piece of information over. And over. “I see,” he said.

“I doubt you do,” Ser John said. “This’ll be the war.”

“The queen is that popular?” Ser Gabriel asked, rhetorically.

“The King must have lost his wits,” Ser John said. “T’other scroll is a tax demand on the Earl of Westwall.”

Ser Gabriel smiled. “I see,” he said. Because he did.

“There’s more. The Archbishop of Lorica has called a council to investigate…” He looked down. “A range of charges of heresy,” he quoted. “Against the Order of St. Thomas.” He met the Red Knight’s eyes. “I have to tell you, your grace, that the nun’s preaching is listed on the charges.”

“Sister Amicia?” Gabriel asked.

“She’s virtually a saint, to the people hereabouts,” Ser John said. “There isn’t a man-at-arms in Albinkirk who hasn’t felt her healing. Or her wisdom.”

Ser Gabriel flushed.

Ser John frowned. “It’s as if the King is working to destroy the kingdom.” He shook his head. “De Vrailly’s accusation will no doubt take place at the tourney.”

“And de Vrailly will be the accuser,” Ser Gabriel said.

“Can you take him?” Ser John asked.

Ser Gabriel sighed. “Mayhap,” he said. “I hesitate to stake the future of Alba on it.”

Ser John shrugged. “They say he’s the best knight in the world.”

The Red Knight smiled. “Ah, well. They say I’m the spawn of Satan.” He laughed. “Tourney is eighteen days away.”

The two men sat in a companionable silence. Finally Gabriel rose. “I need to say farewell to my lady mother.”

Ser John nodded. “You won’t change your mind?” he asked.

“I may yet, Ser John. In a way-an odd way-the King has just played into the duchess’s hands.” He rose.

Ser John shook his head. “I still can’t believe he’d take such foolish counsel.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “Ser John-I suggest to you that the Galles at court do not have the king’s best interests at heart.”

Ser John nodded.

Gabriel went out, with the sound of his armour ratcheting along the corridor.

Gabriel knocked at his mother’s outer door, and then, after some time had passed, he worked a praxis and opened it.

“Don’t you dare!” his mother shrieked.

Gabriel opened the inner door. The bronze-eyed girl slipped from the bed, her body blushing her embarrassment from nose to navel, and passed behind the hanging that concealed the garde de robe.

“I need to speak to you, Mother,” Gabriel said. His voice was cheerful. He was fully in command of himself. “I see we really do share some tastes.”

His mother sat up, her body barely concealed by a shift. “You always were an impetuous lout,” she said.

“The King has sent you a summons, ordering you to pay twenty years of back taxes. And threatening war if you don’t.” Gabriel leaned back and settled his right pauldron into a dent in the stone of the wall.

“The fool,” Ghause spat.

“In more ways than one, Mother. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll accept a bride, in exchange for your seal on this alliance.” He handed his mother the scroll. “How do you manage to stay so young?” he asked.

“Murdered virgin’s blood,” she said, her eyes on the document. “Powdered unicorn horn.” She looked up. “Poppycock. It’s just exercise, my dear, and good breeding, and a little sorcery.” Without any fuss, she slipped out of the bed and lit a taper by ops. She took sealing wax and affixed her personal seal. “You won’t regret this.”

“I suspect I will, Mother. But it occurred to me that I didn’t actually think a thousand lives were a fair trade for my connubial bliss. I reserve only your maid. I won’t marry her.” He smiled. “Though I might want her after I have my new bride in kindle.”

His mother smiled and then bit her lip. “You’re hiding something,” she said. “I know you.”

“I am,” he said. “But if we’re both lucky, you’ll never know what. I’m off for Harndon.” He bent, and quite formally kissed her hand.

She laughed. “You are being foolish, my boy. But I am glad to have you back at my side.”

He nodded. But in his new-found wisdom, he chose not to answer her.

The southbound convoy formed by the outer gates of the town. The Red Knight was leaving many of his best men and women behind, and taking only his household. Ser Michael rode at the head, carrying the new banner-the banner of Thrake, a golden eagle on a ground of dark red. Ser Phillipe de Beause, Ser Francis Atcourt and the young Etruscan, Angelo di Laternum, and Chris Foliak were resplendent even in the rain. Behind them came their squires and pages, and two wagons of baggage and harness, under Sadie Lantorn, whose career as a woman of the company was apparently unaffected by her sister’s marriage into the highest ranks of the gentry. Sukey had other duties for a few days.

As a rearguard, the Duke of Thrake had six Morean lances under Ser Christos-his first command in the company, although he had once been the strategos for the former duke. With him were five other magnates of Thrake, and if they objected to having to ride into the frigid delights of an Alban spring, they kept their views to themselves. Ser Alcaeus, who might have been expected to stay with his banda, was instead riding with them.

Out on the plain that stretched to the river, the Hillmen could be seen forming their flocks and herds and moving them across the water at Southford. The process had been going on for two days.

The Red Knight looked around for the one face he missed, and gave up. He drew his sword and flicked a salute at the gate guard, who returned it more formally, and Ser John, mounted on a pretty bay, came out and locked hands with the Red Knight.

“I’ll do my best,” Ser Gabriel said.

“I still can’t believe she agreed. What did she ask for?” Ser John asked.

Ser Gabriel smiled. “A life of chastity,” Ser Gabriel said. He left the older knight speechless and led his household and their baggage south, to the ford.

At the ford, he found the woman he’d missed. Sister Amicia sat on her little horse with her two attendants, Sisters Mary and Katherine.

“May we accompany you on the road?” she asked.

The Red Knight used his knees to press his riding horse close to hers. Her smile was brave. He hoped his was as good.

“You mean you wish to spend ten days on the road to Harndon with us?” he asked.

“I’ve been accused of heresy,” she said, her back straight and her head high. “I intend to meet it in person, and not cower here. I gather you have similar plans.”

He thought of various quips, but it had always been her courage he loved best. He bowed. “I’d be delighted to have your company, Sister.”

Horse by horse and wagon by wagon, the ferry took them across. In each ferry load, the weight was made up by sheep or cattle-enormous cattle with vicious horns. The lowing of the herds, the belches and farts, the sound of chewing, the hollow tread of their hooves, went on and on.

Bad Tom met the Red Knight on the south side. The road up from the ferry to the high bank was solid mud, and the younger nun’s palfrey almost lost its rider going up.

“You brought her,” Tom said with real approval.

“It’s not what you think,” Ser Gabriel said.

Bad Tom laughed. “Sometimes I think you’re the smartest loon I’ve ever known,” Tom said. “And other times the greatest fool.”

Amicia rode up in the last sentence. She laughed.

Ser Gabriel laughed. “Ten days on the road with you lot?” He smiled. “Let’s go to Harndon,” he said.

Two hundred leagues to the north, Thorn stood in his place of power, staff in left hand, but this time he cast no power. He was in his new form of stone and wood, tall and impregnable. He held the results of a year of breeding a careful, dreadful nurture.

At a distance, his right arm would have seemed to be sheathed in fur. Closer examination would indicate a dozen giant purple-black moths, each as big as a heavy bird of prey.

He reached through the aethereal until he made contact with the aura of power that was his Dark Sun. He showed the aura to his moths, and he flung his arm up, like a falconer sending his bird after prey.

And they flew.