The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Three

Harndon-The Queen

Spring was a season made for joys, but Desiderata had few enough of them. She sat in her solar with Diota brushing her hair.

“Never you fuss, lass,” Diota prattled. “Soon enough he’ll come back to his duty.”

“Duty?” Desiderata asked.

“Don’t snap at me, you minx,” Diota said. “You know what I mean.”

“You mean, when I’ve had my baby, my body will be desirable again, and my lover will return?” the queen asked, mildly enough. “You mean that this is the role of women, and I should abide it?”

“If you must,” Diota said. “That’s men.”

“He is the king,” Desiderata said.

“He’s ill-advised,” Diota said, patiently. “That Rohan all but pushed the red-headed vixen into the king’s arms. The chit never had a chance.”

“I agree that she’s little to blame,” Desiderata said. She enjoyed the kiss of the sun on her bare shoulders and her hair, and listened to the sounds her baby made-increasingly strident and yet beloved sounds.

She was contemplating her unborn child when a bell rang and the outer door opened.

“Fuss, it’s the witch,” Diota spat, and moved protectively to her mistress’s other side.

Outside, a young woman said, “And where is the royal lady this morning?” in a Jarsay accent.

Lady Genevieve was the plainest-and eldest-of the queen’s ladies, a good ten years older than the queen. She wore a cross big enough to hang on a wall and her dress was plain to the point of being frumpish. She wore dark colours and sometimes even wore a wimple, although today she wore her hair in an Alban fashion-each plait was wound in the shape of a turret, making her head look like a fortress gate, which the queen found particularly apt.

“Welcome, Lady Genevieve,” the queen said.

“All this hair brushing is mere vanity,” Lady Genevieve said. She sat without asking permission. “I have brought you some religious instruction.” She looked at Diota. “You may go.”

The queen frowned. “My lady, it is for me to welcome or dismiss my servants. Of whom you yourself are one. I have never been much for formality, but you may stand until I ask you to sit.”

“Do not give yourself airs,” Lady Genevieve said. “You are a wife taken in adultery, bearing another man’s bastard, and the sign of your shame is on you every instant.” She remained seated. “My lord de Vrailly has sent me to attend you, and I shall. But do not pretend with me.”

Desiderata nodded slowly. “So you refuse my command,” she said.

Lady Genevieve was the widow of a southern lord. She knew how to make herself obeyed. “I will accept any reasonable command,” she said sweetly. “Let me read to you from the Life of Saint Catherine.”

“What if I do not wish you to read?” the Queen asked, already weary.

“You are unwomanly in your striving,” Lady Genevieve said. “A woman’s role is passive acceptance, as I told my husband on many occasions. Indeed, I was a byword for passive acceptance.” She snapped her fingers. “If your woman is to remain, she may as well be useful. I’ll have a cup of sweet cider, Diota.” She turned back to the queen. “Where was I? Ah yes-passive acceptance.”

Diota slipped out and found Blanche, one of the queen’s laundry maids, in the outer solar.

The nurse took a cup and poured cider from a jug, and then, catching Blanche’s eye, she reached under her skirts and wiped her hand there and then used it to stir the cider.

Blanche stifled a cackle and handed the nurse a slip of parchment that had been pinned to a shift.

Another of the queen’s “new ladies” came in the outer door without knocking, but by the time she came in, Blanche was folding shifts and putting them into the press.

Lady Agnes Wilkes, twenty-nine, unmarried, and with a face capable of curdling milk, stalked in and looked sullenly at the serving girl. “What are you about, slut?” she asked.

Blanche kept working. “Folding, milady.”

Lady Agnes frowned. “Do this sort of thing at night,” she said. “I don’t need to see your kind in these rooms by day, and neither does the queen. What if the King were to come?”

Diota slipped away with her cup of cider and gave it with a sketchy curtsy to Lady Genevieve, who didn’t acknowledge her at all. She took the cup and drank from it. “Tart and sweet,” she said.

Diota smiled happily. “A pleasure to serve you, my lady,” she said.

“Well,” Lady Genevieve said. “A change for the better, then. I see Lady Agnes has come in and I’ll exchange a word with her.” The older woman rose and set her cup down with a click.

She went out, and they could hear her in the outer chamber.

Diota handed the Queen the slip of parchment. The Queen seized it, read it-and then put it in her mouth and began to chew.

Diota collected cups and a shift and began to tidy the queen’s private chamber.

The two ladies came in. “Your Lady Rebecca has deserted you,” Lady Agnes said with real satisfaction. “Lord de Rohan sent for her this morning, but she’s fled. Many things are missing-she was a thief as well as a heretic. I am here to make an inventory.”

“Lady Rebecca had no need to steal,” the Queen said. “She was the lord chancellor for half a year.”

Lady Agnes made a face, and Lady Genevieve made a rude noise. “Perhaps the King pretended that she was the chancellor,” she said. “No woman could ever hold such an office.” She spoke as if she relished the low estate of women. “What foolishness. Women have no aptitude for such things. When I was with my husband, I cultivated a becoming passivity. I never put myself forward.”

“What happened after?” the queen asked sweetly.

“After what, my dear?” Lady Genevieve asked.

“After your husband died?” the Queen asked.

Diota almost choked, but Lady Genevieve frowned. “I have no idea what you are about, madame.”

The queen rose.

“You need to dress,” Lady Agnes said. The Queen was wearing only a shift, and her belly was magnificent-and very visible.

“I am more comfortable like this,” the queen said.

“You are lewd. Indecent.” Lady Agnes began to seize clothes from a cabinet.

“In my private solar?” the queen asked. “I think not.”

“I do not wish to gaze on your body,” Lady Agnes said. At odds with her words, her eyes were on the queen’s belly.

“You are very wanton,” Lady Genevieve said. “We will dress you. It is time you had the becoming clothes of a matron, and shed all this vanity.”

The queen smiled. Her smile was lazy and slow, and took its time, and in the end, she shocked Diota.

“You know, my ladies,” she said. “I think perhaps you have the right of it, and my baby has addled my wits. I will, indeed, cultivate a becoming passivity.”

Blanche took her laundry basket and went into the corridors below the Queen’s Tower, moving briskly. No one particularly wanted to see servants in the formal areas of the palace, not even trusted servants like Blanche, who wore the crisp red and blue livery of the winter. It had only changed ten days ago, and her sideless surcoat and matching kirtle marked her as “belonging.”

Of course, few were quite so rude about their wishes as the queen’s new “ladies.”

Ladies, Blanche thought to herself, and crossed the corridor that led to the King’s Tower after a careful glance in either direction. The Galles who now inundated the court like crabs at high tide were often present here, gathered in little knots with their cousins and brothers, looking for offices and sinecures.

They were the most determined rascals she’d ever known. None of them had tried outright rape-not yet-but she’d been offered every insult short, and various grasping hands and sweaty palms and scratchy moustaches had tried her virtue over the last few months.

Blanche’s contempt-the contempt of an attractive young woman-was absolute. She loathed them for their obvious contempt for women, she thought them weak for their ceaseless striving, and she cursed them with the worst derision she could offer because they appeared desperate. None of them had any idea how to approach a woman-all the servants said so. They were as aggressive-and mindless-as hungry wolves.

Blanche passed the king’s corridor with a feeling of relief, her mission nearly complete, and descended two winding stone staircases-servants’ stairs, and thus almost unfailingly safe. She passed one of the upper palace male servants-Robin le Grant, wine steward-who gave her a bow and a smile.

The servants were developing a whole language for the situation. That smile meant the stairs were clear.

Blanche slowed her pace and breathed a little easier. Her contempt for the Galles was not unmixed with fear.

She passed the kitchen corridor with a nod to three kitchen girls she knew.

“Laundress was askin’ for you,” said the nearest. She flashed a smile.

Blanche suspected that all three of them were malingering-loitering in corridors was not encouraged by the Butler, who was both a gentleman and a senior servant and ruled with a rod of iron. But she returned their smiles. “Stairs is clear,” she said as she swept past and turned again, walking down the familiar short flight of steps. To the right was the river gate, or at least the portions of the old fortifications and the corridors that led there. To the left lay the laundry, a kingdom-or rather, a queendom-entirely populated by women. There were laundresses who actually washed, and laundresses who only ironed, and laundresses who were really fine seamstresses for everything from repair to marking-every garment in the palace was marked with the owner’s initials in fine, neat cross-stitching. All in all, from twelve-year-old Celia who washed the dirtiest linens to ninety-year-old Mother Henk who could barely work but still had the finest embroidery stitches in Harndon, the laundry employed forty-five women all day, every day. The Laundress-Goodwife Ross-wore upper palace livery but never left her domain.

She was standing by the door to her alcove when Blanche came by. Blanche curtsied-the laundry was formal enough.

“I worry for you, lass,” Dame Ross said. She looked in the basket.

Blanche shook her head. “No mending for the queen.”

“Any trouble?” the Laundress asked.

“No Galles in the corridors. The queen’s new ladies were a treat though.” No palace servant ever spoke slightingly of any member of the upper classes-not directly. It was all tone and eye contact, nothing that could be reported or punished.

Goodwife Ross narrowed her eyes. “Anything I should know?”

“Lady Agnes suggested that I had no business in the queen’s chambers. And me in my livery!” Blanche spat her words with more vehemence than she’d intended.

The Laundress pursed her lips. “I see,” she said.

Blanche dropped a short curtsey-the bob of the working woman. “I’ll be about it then, ma’am,” she said.

Goodwife Ross dismissed her with a wave. The goodwife was aware-in the vaguest way-that Blanche “did something” for the queen. That was sufficient for her.

Blanche took her basket into the steamy main laundry. The moment she upended it on the sorting table, her life as the queen’s messenger vanished to be replaced by her usual life.

“Blanche! There you are! Be a sweet and fetch us a cup of water?” asked rheumy old Mother Henk.

“Blanche, you promised to teach me stem stitch!” begged young Alice.

“Blanche, there’s a mort of fine sewing waiting in your basket and I’ve all I can do keeping the King in braes,” snapped Ellen. Ellen was the other upper palace laundress who wore livery and was allowed to collect laundry in the public rooms of the palace. Like Blanche, she was young, pretty, and had worked in the palace since she’d been a young child.

By that point in her work day, Blanche was delighted to collapse onto one of the backed chairs that the fine sewers used while mending. From the pockets under her kirtle, Blanche fetched out her prize possession-her sewing kit, with a pair of steel scissors made by Master Pye himself, a pair of silver thimbles, a dozen fine horn thread winders full of threads-white linen, white silk, black linen, black silk, and this season, red and blue for the livery.

Ellen was putting thread on her winders. Thread came from the dyers in skeins, and sewing women and tailors had to wind it onto something of their own. Blanche owned two beautiful thread winders-a tiny one of ivory that had been her mother’s and another of mother of pearl from far off Ifriquy’a. Both were at home.

“If the King wears his hose any tighter,” Ellen said and shook her head. Laid across her lap were a fanciful pair of hose, one leg alternating diagonals of red and blue, the other leg solid scarlet with a patch of superb gold embroidery. The hose were in the latest style that joined at the top, and they had torn in the crotch.

“He’s too old for these tight things,” Ellen said. A year ago, open criticism of the king’s taste in clothes would never have been uttered. Blanche felt disloyal just listening.

Ellen frowned, aware of her transgression. “I only mean…” She paused. And looked down at her scarlet thread winder. She finished it off and then loaded her blue.

Her thought was unspoken, but they didn’t need to share it. Blanche knew that Ellen’s criticism was not for the King, but for his new lover, a red-headed girl of seventeen. Lady Jane Sable. Her name was never mentioned in the servants’ halls below. She seemed to inspire in the King a sort of ferocity to pretend he was young, and his pursuit of youth-hers, his own-had led to a loss of royal dignity that all the servants felt reflected on them.

Lady Jane was herself not so bad. She was well-bred enough to be careful; she was cautious about the king’s reputation, and she was polite to the servants. But she had her own waiting woman, Sarah, and her laundry never came to the laundry. Sarah ate in her mistress’s rooms and never came into the great hall below stairs where the servants dined and many slept. The lady’s father was already the leader of the pro-Galle faction of Albans.

Blanche began to repair the queen’s shifts. She had patiently run up half a dozen new ones that suited the queen’s changed shape, working at home with her mother, and now even the new shifts were having their carefully felled side-seams pulled.

Blanche pulled a small seam-ripper-a razor sharp knife with a rebated point, just a few inches long, and another product of Master Pye’s superb eye and hand-from her basket and began to open a side seam.

“Blanche!” called Goodwife Ross. Blanche rose to her feet, dropped her sewing into the basket beside the chair and rushed to the Laundress, whose commands were not to be ignored. She still had her little knife in her hand-it was precious, five days’ wages’ worth of steel and it would slice through her pockets in a heartbeat. She tucked it behind her ear.

“Blanche, I need you to run a message to Master Cord’s down Cheapside. And ask where our spring linen order is. I’m that vexed and I misremembered this morning.”

Indeed, the whole establishment ate fine white linen the way a newborn suckled milk, and Master Cord’s later delivery was playing merry hell with the laundry.

Blanche bobbed a curtsey.

“I’ll have Ellen finish the shifts,” Goodwife Ross said.

Blanche shook her head-one tiny sideways motion to indicate disagreement was allowed in senior staff. “I’ll take it home, if’n it please you, ma’am.”

Goodwife Ross nodded her strong approval. “Good. Ellen has her hands full. Fetch your basket and skip along.”

Blanche stepped back into the seamstress’s room and re-packed her basket.

Ellen sighed. “A nice spring day? I’d like to be sent with the errands.”

Blanche frowned. “Goodwife worries about ye, Ellen.”

“I can handle myself,” the young woman said. But where Blanche was tall and broad shouldered, Ellen was doll-like and slim as a reed. The strength of Blanche’s arms and hands was legendary among the pages and squires to whom she’d taught a few manners-even before the Galles came.

“None of us can handle the Galles,” Blanche said. “Are you careful when you walk out? Never the same route twice?”

“Yes, Mother,” Ellen said, and laughed. “May I please have another cup of milk?” Both girls laughed. “But Blanche, ain’t you a Galle?”

Blanche nodded. “My pater was, sure enough.” Blanche de Roeun, a town in Galle, once. Now she was Blanche Gold.

Ellen shrugged. “So there are some good Galles.”

Blanche frowned. “Some? These are a blight. Galles is lovely folk, Ellen. Think of the Count D’Eu!”

Ellen smiled. Both girls admired him. “Well, if you’ll not tell me how to walk and suck eggs, I’ll not twit you with your Galles.”

Blanche grinned. “Sorry, sweet.”

“You be careful,” Ellen said.

Blanche kissed her on the cheek. “Always careful, my honey.”

She was out the door of the laundry, under full sail as Ellen, a shipwright’s daughter, liked to say. Blanche did not generally enter or leave the palace in broad daylight. She came so early in the morning that the squires weren’t up, and she left when they started drinking. But she’d hurt one of the Galles-and she knew that they had her marked.

Past the water-gate corridor.

But the main hall corridor up the stairs was crowded with gentles. She knew from the bottom of the steps, just from their shoes-mostly long-toed poulains-that she was looking at Rohan’s crowd; a dozen Gallish knights and squires. The worst.

She froze, her foot on the third step.

“There’s a pretty slut,” someone said above her.

“Thighs as white as her name, I’ll bet,” said another.

She knew them all, even if they didn’t know her. Rohan was the very worst-the centre of the poison, so to speak. His eyes crossed hers.

She dropped her eyes and passed back a step.

“The king!” someone shouted, and all the courtiers stiffened. That would mean that the King was passing from his apartments to the great hall. Courtiers lined the corridor, hoping to be recognized and spoken to.

“Jeffries! Malquil!” Rohan said quietly, his voice calm and even. “See the bitch on the steps? She’s the queen’s lap-dog. Maybe her she-whore. Take her and give her a dose of manhood, eh bien?”

The two men he’d named turned and started down the steps. Neither was a Galle. Both were Alban squires dressed as Galles, in skin-tight hose and very short doublets. The taller of the two came down two steps at a time and cut her off from the right hand turn.

Blanche didn’t panic, although two strong men scared her. She turned left, into the water-gate corridor, hoping for some loitering staff, but the corridor was empty.

She moved.

They were almost at her shoulders. She screamed-loud and long-hoisted her skirts and ran.

Everyone north of Cheapside knew how fast Blanche Gold was. Her legs were very long, and she knew how to use them, and the straight corridor offered no hindrance. It was almost completely dark, but she knew it intimately, at least for the first twenty yards.

She side-stepped the old fountain base. One of the squires didn’t. She was five paces ahead of them now. Their long-toed shoes and skin-tight woollen hose laced to their doublets were not made for running, and her palace shoes and bare legs were.

A childhood of playing in these corridors, and Blanche had options.

She went left, towards the water gate. Now she was against the outer walls, and shafts of light crossed the corridor. She took the turn at speed and allowed herself to strike the outer wall lightly with her shoulder.

She could hear their poulains slapping on the floor.

She hadn’t dropped her basket, and as she slowed for the gate, she used it to cushion her impact with the far wall. Then she went down the sharply angled steps, worn by two thousand years of use, and she was already surrounded by the strong, muddy river smell.

She moved as fast as she could on the slippery steps, praying that there were guards at the bottom and that the gate was open.

The Virgin was with her as she prayed, and there, on the narrow dock, were two of her least favourite guardsmen, both portly and both known for their roving hands and shifty eyes. She’d never been so happy to see them.

“Eh, Blanche!” said the nearer.

She smiled. “Ned!” she said.

The first of the two squires emerged onto the dock.

Blanche flicked her eyes at the squire. He was already hesitating. His friend emerged from the water gate, rubbing his thigh.

Ned wasn’t slow. He grunted and shifted his weight-just a half step. But his obvious intention was to block access to the dock.

“No one but livery on the dock, less’an you have a king’s writ,” Ned said.

His partner grunted. They both had good brown poleaxes that shone in the spring sun, a rich ruddy brown. They were both in the new livery, and the squires were not.

The nearer squire drew himself up. “I mean to have a word with that slut,” he said. “I think that she… stole from me.”

He stepped forward, and Ned placed the point of his poleaxe at the squire’s nose. “Best take that up with the Laundress. That’s Goody Ross, last corridor but one.”

“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.

“Can’t say I do,” Ned said, managing to side-smile at his partner. “But I know I’m a King’s Guardsman and you ain’t.”

A water taxi-a small boat poled by a grown man-saw Blanche and began to pole up the side channel to the water gate, eyes hopeful.

Blanche shot the squire a reproachful glare. “Which the Laundress sends me to Cheapside,” she said. She spat into the dirty water. “I don’ steal.” She locked eyes with the man. “I’m the queen’s laundress, sir.”

He shocked all of them by grabbing for her.

Ned tipped him in the water.

Blanche didn’t stay to see the end. She skipped into the approaching boat as two more foppishly dressed men appeared on the dock.

“Take her!” yelled the other squire, the one rubbing his thigh.

The man in the water surfaced. “You’re dead!” he shrieked.

Blanche settled into the stern of the boat. The waterman’s expression showed nothing. “Where bound, mistress?” he asked.

She couldn’t afford to be taken all the way to Cheapside-it would cost a full day’s wages.

They were already clear of the walls of the palace, and she could see four big round ships anchored to the river bank on their side.

“Venike,” the waterman said. “All the way from Ifriquy’a, if you will believe it.” He sighed. “Now that’s navigation, mistress.”

There were big crowds there-small boats all around the tall Venike ships, and then crowds on the shore and an impromptu market.

“Boat following us, mistress,” the waterman said. “He has oars and I don’t. He’s going to overtake us.”

Blanche looked back into the sun-dazzle of the water. She could just see a boat, its oars whipping furiously. In it were two men-maybe three.

“Can you land me by the docks?” she said.

“No place for a decent woman,” the waterman said. “You in trouble?”

Blanche nodded.

The waterman looked back. “I’ll slow ’em for ye.” He smiled. “For a kiss.”

Blanche looked at him and smiled.

The waterman poled furiously, and the two craft passed downstream. Blanche couldn’t tell which was faster.

The waterman passed under the great stern of the Venike flagship, towering above them like a church, with windows and windows like a great house. In the stern gallery, a Venike man-at-arms in full harness pointed a warning finger at them, but Blanche waved and he waved back.

The waterman put the prow of his little boat ashore so that Blanche had only to give a brave leap and she’d be on the port stairs, where the poor came to wash.

He stepped nimbly over the centre seat. “Kiss!” he said.

She handed him a silver farthing, and then, an honest maid, leaned up and kissed him lightly on the lips.

He smiled. “Honest coin, fair maid.”

She grinned and leapt over the bow, made the steps without slipping, and ran up the steps.

At the top, she turned-deliberately-into the thickest part of the crowd. The Venike had a special privilege, and were allowed to set up a market wherever they pleased. The tables they had laid over barrels were covered in goods worth a fortune-worth ten fortunes. She caught the flash of ivory-whole tusks, and the dead white tusks of the unnatural Ummaroth. She saw silk and inlaid wood and silver.

She passed along the back of the packed crowd of nobles and merchants at the tables. She wore royal livery, she was pretty, and she had a lifetime experience of moving through crowds.

She was also becoming aware that the portside market was full of Galles. For the first time-as she saw heads turn-she began to be truly afraid. It was all a game until they caught her, and if they did it would be horrible. Ruin, damnation, pain and humiliation and outrage.

And always the girl’s fault.

She never let herself think about it, but now, in broad daylight in the king’s capital surrounded by predators, Blanche found herself angry.

But her choices were narrowing. She cursed her own courage, that had led her to turn away from the laundry and head for the water gate. She was about to reach Waterside, the slum of warehouses and brothels and sailor’s taverns just north of Cheapside. A place she would never, ordinarily, have gone, day or night.

She looked back one more time, eyes searching for one familiar livery, one friendly face-one of the Queen’s knights or squires. There were few enough left, but even a King’s Guardsman might help now.

No one. Not even a clerk in the Random livery. The Randoms were known to be loyal and discreet…

Her royal livery made her too obvious. She could see the heads turning, could feel the intensity of their regard. Gallish voices called back and forth.

Blanche turned into the mouth of an alley. She walked past the body of a dead cat and hoped it wasn’t an omen. Garbage-mostly vegetable matter-lay in heaps, and her good palace shoes squelched through it.

Her anger grew.

“Voisi! Voisi!” voices shouted at the mouth of the alley.

She ran.

Ten yards in front of her, the alley split, running to either side of a brothel that stood like the prow of a ship, called, with devastating originality, the “Oar House.” From the very point of the corner hung the sign, a pair of oars crossed with an erect penis thrust suggestively between them, in case anyone missed the sign’s meaning.

Blanche knew where she was. She turned left and continued to run. Any of the pimps hereabouts would trip her up just to see what happened-so she was careful and kept to the middle of the street.

Catcalls and whistles followed her.

She turned at Sail Maker’s Lane. She was tending towards Ellen’s father’s shop-and at the same time wondering how much these men would dare.

Ellen’s father was not the man to save her.

But deliberation takes time, and she heard pounding feet.

She turned again, into the alley that ran parallel to the sail lofts where big ships paid to dry and mend their canvas.

An arm barred her progress-she slammed full tilt into it and fell, basket flying.

Panic bubbled close.

“What’s your hurry, my pretty?” said a lout. He wore old parti-colour in a southern livery and had a club in his belt. He squinted at her.

She rolled, fouling the whole of her best livery in the watery slime of human and animal excrement of the alley. But she got a hand on the handle of her basket-

A hand grabbed her left arm in a vise of iron.

She screamed. Knowing it was probably the wrong thing to do-that it might attract more predators. But her courage was cracking, and she knew what was coming.

“Look what I have!” said an Alban voice. But as she turned her head and her right hand came up, she saw it was another Alban boy aping the Galles in his tight hose, his arse hanging out in the breeze. Something pricked her right arm as she tried to fight him…

He put his hands around her waist from behind and tried to nuzzle her neck.

She raised herself on her toes, her hands on his, and as the master-at-arms taught the maids, she broke his grip and slammed her basket at him. With her right hand she pulled the offending object from her hair-her thread knife.

She slammed it into his reaching hand and it went all the way in and ripped out again, sharp as any razor. Blood fountained, and the man stumbled back.

He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “I’ll do you, you bitch!” he shouted.

The southerner tried to grab her. With the grace of desperation, she pivoted and slammed her skirted knee into his balls-hard enough contact to make him mew like a kitten, although his backhand almost knocked her down. She scraped her thread knife over his face and backed into the alley.

She backed three steps. It looked like a dead end-she prayed, and prayed, her mind running too fast, and she saw the dead man’s feet-a corpse-and thought of how soon she’d join it. And how odd that the dead man’s boots had curly toes like a Moor’s.

She toyed with using the little knife on her own wrist. It was a mortal sin. Eternity in hell.

She wished that she was a little luckier, but the dead end was resolutely dead.

The little knot of men were playing with her now. They knew she had nowhere to go, and they were laughing. The bleeding man laid claim to be first on her body.

She looked for a weapon.

“Look out! She bites,” laughed one of the Albans. He had a big dagger in his fist, and he thrust it into the southerner as he passed, and stepped aside as the blood flowed. The southerner looked stunned by his own death, and the squire laughed.

He looked at Blanche. “Come out, you little slut, and take what you get. If I have to dirty myself dragging you out, I’ll slit your nose when I’m done fucking you.” He smiled, raised his hand, and beckoned.

She shrank back.

“Last chance,” he said.

The alley ended where four ramshackle buildings came together, and two of them shared an ancient set of roof trees. Blanche had seen the gap-at her head height-the smell of piss told her that men and animals stood here to urinate, especially when it was raining. The gap was too high for her.

She whimpered.

“Stupid slut,” the man said.

“Four men on one poor girl!” she managed. “You cowards!”

He shrugged. But he respected her enough to keep his knife well forward, and he pushed in.

She decided to make him kill her, and she attacked.

He passed the dagger effortlessly under her hand and broke her right wrist in the twinkle of an eye. Her beautiful sewing knife fell in the piss.

He kneed her in the gut so hard that she threw up as she fell to her knees.

“Now,” he said, with grim humour, “I think I’ve earned the right to be first. I-”

She didn’t really see what happened, because her head was down, but suddenly there was an apparition out of hell in the alley-a big man, black as night, in outlandish foreign clothes.

The black man had come out of the gap above her. The dead man’s boots-the man wasn’t dead. Her disoriented senses allowed her that much.

“Who the fuck are you?” the squire said. He backed up a step and went for his sword.

The blackamoor stood easily, legs slightly apart. He wore a curved sword, sheathed.

The squire’s friends shouted from the mouth of the alley.

Blanche pushed a vomit-soaked strand of hair out of her mouth and tried to think.

The squire drew, and as his hand moved, the black man drew, and cut-one incredibly beautiful motion-a minute pivot of the hips and the squire’s sword-and hand, still attached-fell to the earth.

The squire shrieked. It was the sound of a man having the soul ripped from his body, and like Blanche, he fell to his knees. Blood fountained.

He seemed unable to understand what had happened. He leaned forward, and his searching left hand found his severed right and tried to pull it to him.

The black man snapped his sword in a short arc, and the very tip passed across the wounded man’s eyes and through the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly with an economy of effort that was wasted on the onlookers. The squire fell forward over his own lap, still kneeling.

The blackamoor stepped forward. Blanche got her hand on her sewing knife-like her clothes and her skin, it would wash. Her right wrist was broken or sprained. It would mend. She pushed her back against the filthy wall behind her and levered herself up.

Her linen basket had not spilled. She dropped the knife into it and picked it up left handed. She wasn’t thinking well. She needed the knife.

The black figure was not a daemon. He was an infidel-she’d seen his kind a few times. Black men were part of her life-Joe Green was the king’s greengrocer, and Miles Greathorn was black as pitch and in the King’s Guard. But this man’s blackness was almost blue, and he was taller and thinner than the others she’d seen.

And very still. He was at the mouth of the alley, now, and yet it was as if he’d never moved. His sword appeared almost small in his hands, held out behind him like a tail.

She watched the Galles hesitate.

The paynim didn’t hesitate. When the other men paused, he leaned and his blade snapped in a short arc, and blood fountained.

“Go for the watch!” shouted the wounded man.

The infidel moved his sword into a new guard, held economically in front above his hips, the curving point aimed at the Galles. The biggest of them drew-and attacked.

The black man spun and spun again.

The biggest Galle fell like a tree, and the paynim’s blade flicked back to kill the man he’d wounded.

There were now five corpses cooling, counting the southerner.

The Galles and their friends backed away. “You can’t do this,” one said, over and over.

Another began screaming for the watch.

Blanche’s head began to work again. However black the man might be, and dressed like a foreign unbeliever, he’d saved more than her life. And the watch, whatever she might say, would side with upper class men over a dirty woman and a foreigner. Unless they were very lucky and got someone she knew, like Edmund.

Very carefully-he was unbelievably lethal, and his stillness was as terrifying as his colour-she moved behind him. She talked to him as if he was a horse, sure that he couldn’t speak her language.

“If you come with me-just come. I’m not going to hurt you-passing behind you, kind sir. Come along with me.” She passed behind him, well within the lethal range of his curved blade. Her knees were watery and her hands shook and her wrist throbbed with a sick kind of pain, but she bit down on the urge to be weak.

Like a skittish horse, she knew she had his attention by the tilt of his head.

She passed behind him, out of the mouth of the alley, stepped past the dead man who lay there and heard people coming.

“Come!” she said.

In the far distance, she heard “Watch, watch!” bellowed.

“Come!” she shouted. He was not moving.

She turned. She’d tried. Down the hill lay Cheapside and safety.

“Come on!” she called. She extended a hand-a damaged, blood-soaked hand. It was swelling already.

He flicked her a glance-and moved. He stooped over one of his victims and picked up the man’s hat, and in two strides, he’d cleaned his sword with the hat, tossed it aside and returned the curved blade to his scabbard without looking.

She began to run.

He followed her.

Her wrist began to throb, and every long stride hurt it more, and she tried to catch it in her left, and that hurt-she screamed. She hadn’t meant to, but her scream came out with the pain and she was kneeling in the street. Now one of her knees hurt, too.

Another armed man had appeared.

He had a naked sword in his hand, and he was as tall as a tree and almost as wide as a house.

She shuddered in relief, because everyone in her part of Harndon knew Ser Ricar Orcsbane, Knight of the Order.

But even as her vision tunnelled, she knew she could not let go.

She got her head up.

“Ser Ricar!” she said. “Oh, Christ-he saved me, ser knight.”

Ser Ricar was under a vow of silence. He looked at the paynim. He kept his long sword between them.

“He saved me, you hear me, ser? Galles attacked me-Sweet Virgin, mother of God-” She was babbling, and somehow, she was listening to herself babble from a great distance and the pain was ebbing and flowing like a tide.

She moaned, and tried to sit up.

They were of a height, the two men-one pale and red haired, with freckles across his enormous nose, and the other black as pitch with indigo added. The Ifriquy’an’s nose was smaller and finer, but otherwise, they were a measure of wide shoulders and narrow waists. Their swords were a match, too.

Both looked at the girl who had fallen forward over her knees. Both kept their swords up, between them, with the ease of long familiarity.

And neither spoke.

In the near distance, voices cried for the watch.

Ser Ricar gave the very slightest bow. Then, like an uncoiling spring, he sheathed his sword and bent, lifting the fallen woman as if she was made of feathers.

She stiff-armed him with her uninjured left hand. “Don’t touch me!” she spat, though she heard herself say it from a distance. “I can walk!”

The infidel allowed himself a smile. He inclined his head, and his sword vanished into the mouth of its scabbard.

The Knight of the Order released Blanche and stepped back, hands held up.

Blanche got to her feet. “I’ll get myself there,” she said grimly.

The Knight of the Order gave her a bow-respect, admonition, concurrence-it was a very expressive bow. And then he turned and ran down the hill toward Cheapside, Blanche trailing, stumbling, but managing her legs the way a mother might manage wayward children, and, last, the infidel.

Albans, like many folk, have never been fond of what they don’t know. Hence, the new Archbishop of Lorica was almost always referred to as the “new bishop” as if newness itself was something disgraceful.

The new bishop, Bohemund de Foi, was a Galle. This, too, led to an illogical prejudice. Most of the population of Harndon had names that indicated a Gallish origin; merchants and apprentices and nobles, too. Under the Semples lay Saint Pols. Under the Dentermints lay D’Entre Deux Monts. Six hundred years of prosperous trade between Harndoners and their Gallish cousins should have built trust and love, but it hadn’t, and despite Gallish fashions, Gallish swords, and Gallish Bible covers in every home, Galles were often the subject of biting witticisms or even riots, and the new bishop’s origins would have told against him had he been of saintly and humble demeanour.

In fact, the opinion of the people kept the young Archbishop of Lorica in a state of constant ferment. He was booed in the street, he had clods of earth thrown at his palanquin, and when one of his priests was accused of some very venal flirtation with one of the boys in the ritual choir of the cathedral, the man was badly beaten by apprentices.

So it was in no humble or contrite mood that the most powerful cleric in Alba met with his political ally and cousin, Jean de Vrailly, and his household. Present at de Vrailly’s table was his other cousin, the Count D’Eu; the Sieur de Rohan, whose power at court was beginning to eclipse de Vrailly’s own; and Ser Eustace l’Isle d’Adam, a rising star among de Vrailly’s knights.

De Rohan was the last to arrive and the first to speak. “I have under my hand the good squire Maurice d’Evereoux,” he said, indicating a young man standing in the doorway. “He is prepared to report on the latest outrage perpetrated by the Queen’s people. I am very sorry to tell you gentlemen that four of our people have been killed.”

The Archbishop’s hand went to his throat-the other men present touched their swords.

“What killed them?” de Vrailly spat.

“A woman-one of the Queen’s tire women-summoned a daemon on a public street. The daemon killed four of our noble squires. When our people attempted to pursue the thing, a knight of the so-called ‘Order of Saint Thomas’ was seen, sword in hand, defending the thing.”

The Count D’Eu leaned back, an enigmatic smile on his face. “If it killed four of our squires, messieurs, why did it need defence?”

De Rohan shot him a look full of scorn. “My lord, why ask such a thing? I merely relate the events as they happen.”

D’Eu laughed softly. “Do you know Blanche Gold?” he asked. “I do not think that the notion that she conjured a daemon is going to play especially well.” He looked around. “Not least as it’s a fairly obvious lie.”

De Rohan shot to his feet. “Do you, monsieur, give me the lie?”

D’Eu didn’t stir. “Yes,” he said. “I say you lie.” He nodded to his cousin. “He is lying on purpose, to make trouble.”

De Rohan’s face carried honest, blank amazement.

De Vrailly frowned in distaste. “I wish you would not speak so of the good de Rohan in public; he seeks only to serve.”

“Does he indeed, cousin?” D’Eu rose. “I offer to fight you, de Rohan-right now. By the Law of War.”

D’Eu was in his harness. De Rohan wore the long pointed shoes and short gown of a courtier.

Jean de Vrailly nodded, jaw outthrust. “I take your point, fair cousin. Monsieur de Rohan, you will kindly return to wearing your armour on all but formal occasions. We must remind the court at all times what we represent-the manly virtues that their effeminacy has forgotten.”

D’Eu shook his head. “Nay, cousin, I mean it. This gossipy viper has nothing in his head but the destruction of the Queen and the smearing of her reputation. I say he lies. I offer to prove it on him, with my sword.” D’Eu leaned back. “Par Dieu, I’ll even let him put on his harness-if he can find it.”

Silence fell.

De Rohan was white as parchment. “You-You traitor!”

D’Eu frowned. “My pardon, Monsieur, but detesting you is not treason.”

“You are the one who shields the Queen and warns her!” he began.

Jean de Vrailly stood. “As master of this household, I must require you, cousin, to withdraw your challenge.”

Gaston D’Eu also stood. “On what grounds?” he asked.

Jean de Vrailly’s eyes all but begged him to withdraw. “By my will,” he said.

“You mean, when you killed Towbray’s cousin and I begged you to withdraw-that was different?”

“He challenged my honour,” Ser Jean said patiently.

“De Rohan has just pronounced me a traitor,” D’Eu said reasonably.

“He will retract it,” de Vrailly said.

D’Eu nodded, pursed his lips, and sat. “I will consider,” he said.

De Rohan frowned. He whispered a few words to his squire, D’Alace, and looked at l’Isle d’Adam. “If I am to be given the lie, perhaps I should not continue,” he said.

“I will continue,” the Archbishop of Lorica said. “And perhaps no lout will give me the lie. These people hate us. They are nothing but a nest of heretics and rebels. And the so-called ‘Order of Saint Thomas’ is nothing less than a heretical cult. They harbour witches and Satan-workers, and they have never been approved by the scholastica.”

Patiently, as if dealing with a fool, D’Eu said, “Cousin, you must have been here long enough to know that the Albans follow the Patriarch in Liviapolis and not the Patriarch of Rhum. They care nothing for our scholastica or the theology of the bishop or the University of Lucrece.”

“Heretics,” Bohemund de Foi insisted. “The Patriarch of Rhum has never approved of them. And he, not the upstart infidel in Liviapolis, is the primarch of the world.”

D’Eu made a motion of his hand. The motion suggested that he wiped his arse with the bishop’s argument.

The bishop turned bright red. “You dare!”

D’Eu set his jaw. “What I see, gentlemen, is a small set of my countrymen determined to stop at nothing to create a civil war here. I will be kind and suggest that it is ignorance and not malfeasance that leads you, my lord archbishop, to say these things.”

De Vrailly tapped a thumb on his teeth. “The Order of Saint Thomas were, my lords, fine knights and good men-at-arms when fighting the Wild.”

“Oh, the Wild!” the archbishop all but spat. “All day I listen to this prattle. Weak minds deluded by satanic manifestations! The Wild is nothing but a snare of this world, like women’s wiles and gluttony.”

De Vrailly combed his twin-pointed beard with his fingers. “In this, my lord archbishop, I cannot agree. The Wild is-quite palpable. My angel says-”

The archbishop held up his hand. “Please, Monsieur de Vrailly.”

Silence fell for a moment as the two men glared at each other.

“I propose we move against this Order and suppress them,” the bishop continued. “I have recorded enough of their use of satanic powers to burn every one of them. They brag of their powers.” The archbishop turned on his cousin. “And you threaten your immortal soul every time you consort with them. Or the Queen and her witches.”

De Vrailly was not a man who enjoyed being spited, especially not at his own table and in front of his own squires. “You speak too forcefully for me, my lord archbishop,” de Vrailly said.

“I speak for the good of your soul,” de Foi replied. “The Queen is a witch and must die. The Order are her minions. Everyone in this room knows that what I say is true. If we are to save the souls of these Albans, we must begin by ridding ourselves of these two forces for evil.”

Gaston D’Eu snorted his derision. “I don’t know any such thing,” he said. “And I recommend that my lord archbishop take a dozen of his priests and some animals and ride west into the mountains. I would strongly suggest that what he experiences there may change his mind. If he survives the experience at all.” D’Eu tapped his dagger on the table.

His lieutenant, D’Herblay, laughed with him. Even de Vrailly nodded.

The King’s Champion frowned. “As is often the way, there is merit in what my cousin the count says.”

De Rohan shook his head. “Do you deny that the Queen has committed adultery? We have shown you proof often enough. Are you suddenly a convert to her party?”

De Vrailly shook his head. “I am saddened that we are so divided on these matters. No-I know in my heart she is an evil woman. My angel has told me.”

At the word “angel” the archbishop slapped his hand to his forehead, as if in pain.

“I would at least like to order-in the King’s name-the arrest of this woman, Blanche Gold.” De Rohan took a scroll and handed it to de Vrailly. “She has consistently been one of the Queen’s go-betweens with her lovers. We have witnesses,” he said in a low voice.

Gaston D’Eu watched his cousin accept the scroll and he rose. “I cannot be party to this,” he said.

De Rohan shrugged. “Then take your divisive accusations and your treasonous talk and go, my lord.”

D’Eu shrugged. “I have already challenged you. I cannot do so again. That you ignore my summons to combat says all that needs to be said.”

De Rohan didn’t meet his eye.

“Coward,” D’Eu said.

De Rohan grew red.

“Caitiff. Poltroon. False knight.” D’Eu shrugged. “I see that my words cannot move you. I pity you.” D’Eu turned. “My dearest lord, I take my leave.”

“Wait!” de Vrailly said. “Ah, sweet cousin. Please await my pleasure.”

D’Eu bowed and left with D’Herblay at his shoulder.

“He will ruin everything we seek to build here,” de Rohan said, pleading with de Vrailly.

The King’s Champion looked at him with surprise. “How can you not respond to his challenge?” he asked.

De Rohan drew himself erect. “I serve a higher cause. I can ignore a private quarrel, no matter how unfair it is.”

De Vrailly pursed his lips. “I think you should fight him,” he said. “You are a great knight. I trained you myself. You are the match for any man but me.” He raised an eyebrow. “Otherwise, I have to wonder if he is right. Don’t I? And my lord archbishop, I can’t support arresting the Order of Saint Thomas. We’d have riots. And they help us hold the frontiers.”

The archbishop looked pleadingly at de Rohan.

De Rohan sighed. “If you have lost confidence in me, my lord, perhaps I should withdraw to the King’s court at Lucrece.” He bowed to the archbishop. “I agree that they are a nest of heretics. A woman saying mass? It’s an abomination.”

The bishop raised his eyes to heaven.

De Vrailly looked at them both for a long time, his expressive, wide blue eyes going back and forth between them. “Archbishop, I have every respect for the cloth, but I have difficulty separating your rank from your youth. De Rohan, if you do not feel that you can respond to my cousin’s challenge then you have my permission to withdraw to your estates in Galle.” He rose, his armoured legs making a slight clack as his legs went straight.

When he and his men-at-arms were gone, the archbishop put a hand on de Rohan’s arm. “I’ll deal with it,” he said. “I have a man.”

De Rohan shook his head. His hand on the table was shaking. “That he would dare!” he hissed.

The archbishop put a hand over de Rohan’s. “In a week-less, if the winds are fair-we’ll have three hundred lances, fresh from Galle. We will own this city, and we will have the whip hand we need.”

“He exiled me!” de Rohan said.

The archbishop shrugged. “Wait and see,” he said with a smile.

When the impromptu council broke up, de Rohan and his people went back to court, where the Count of Hoek’s new ambassador was due to be received by the King. Jean de Vrailly listened to his squire for a moment and followed the younger man into his private study, where D’Eu stood quietly.

“Cousin,” he said.

“I’m going back to Galle,” D’Eu said. “I’m sorry, cousin. These men are disgusting. I will not be linked to them. And there is word that…” He sighed. “There is word that the Wild is attacking Arelat. Even Galle.”

De Vrailly nodded. “I, too, have heard this. Bohemund and his people are full of it-because they have this foolish belief that there is no Wild but only the forces of Satan.” De Vrailly shrugged. “Perhaps they are correct.”

“I have lands in Arelat,” D’Eu said. “I am no good to you here, and I have knight service to perform at home. Please let me go.”

De Vrailly paced. “We are close, I think. When I have brought the Queen to trial-”

“An innocent woman,” D’Eu said flatly.

“And when the rest of my knights arrive-”

“A foreign army to cow the Harndoners,” D’Eu said.

“Cousin, my angel has told me-directly-that I must become King to save this realm.” Jean de Vrailly crossed his arms.

D’Eu came and embraced him. “You know I love you,” he said. “But I will not be party to this anymore. I wash my hands of it. I think you are wrong-you and your angel. And I say that, in your delusion, you have unsavoury allies and you ignore your own beliefs.”

De Vrailly’s nostrils flared. “Name one!” he said.

“You preach the Rule of War. But you forbade me to kill that poisonous viper de Rohan.” D’Eu all but spat. “The Rule of War was made for this-when I know in my heart a man is false as black pitch, I kill him. Yet you-you have forbidden me to kill him.”

De Vrailly ran his fingers through his beard and turned away in frustration. “I was surprised,” he said. “But-my angel has told me-”

“Your angel may be a devil!” D’Eu said.

De Vrailly put a hand on his sword.

They faced each other. “Go,” de Vrailly said.

D’Eu bowed deeply. “I will be gone on the first ship of spring, my lord cousin,” he said.

An hour later, Jean de Vrailly was on his knees before his magnificent triptych of Saint Michael, Saint George, and Saint Maurice. He was in his full harness, and the lames around the kneecaps cut into his knees, even though he wore padded hose-bit into them savagely.

He mastered the pain, and remained kneeling.

And he prayed.

His cousin’s stinging words had hurt him. The more so as, in the privacy of his own chamber, he had doubts-severe doubts.

So he knelt, punishing himself for his doubt, and begging his angel for an appearance.

An hour passed, and then another. The pain in his knees was now such as to make it past the guards of his experience and his immunity to the minor pains of wearing his harness. Now he had to admit to a niggle of fear for his knees-how long could mere flesh stand to be tormented by steel?

And his hips-the weight of his mail, of his breast and back, ground into the top of his hips as if he was being pressed to death. If he was standing or riding, the straps on his shoulders would have distributed the weight.

A theologian would have told him that he was committing sin. That by forcing himself to the point of injury, he was testing his angel, and hence, God.

De Vrailly was untroubled by such thoughts.

And eventually, his angel came.

“Ah, my true knight,” the angel said, his voice like the bells of high mass and the trumpets of the King’s court, all together.

De Vrailly bowed his head. The angel was so bright.

“My child, you must want something,” the angel said sweetly.

De Vrailly’s head remained down.

“You have doubts,” the angel said, amused. “Even you.”

“My lord,” de Vrailly said.

“The Queen is most certainly a witch,” the angel said. “She uses the powers of darkness to entrap men.” The angel’s voice was the very essence of reason.

“My lord-”

“You, de Vrailly, must be King here. Only you.” The angel spoke the words softly, but with great force.

De Vrailly sighed. “I like the King.” He shook his head. “And I am not sure that the Queen…”

The angel smiled. “Your conscience does you credit, good knight. And de Rohan surely rivals Judas as a scheming betrayer.”

De Vrailly’s head shot up. “Yes! To think that work was one of mine-”

“The King of Kings must use the tools that come into his hand,” the angel said. “Even de Rohan.”

De Vrailly sighed. “As always, Puissant Lord, you put my mind at rest.” De Vrailly paused. “But I loathe de Rohan.”

The angel nodded. “So does God. Imagine how He felt about Judas.”

The angel put an insubstantial hand on de Vrailly’s head, and his power flowed through that hand and over de Vrailly, so that for a moment he was suffused in rich, golden light. “You will have much sorrow in the coming days,” the angel said. “This is no easy task I have set you. Beware the snares. When the King is gone-”

“Where will he go?” de Vrailly asked.

“When the King is gone to death, then you will know what to do,” the angel said.

The appearance of an Ifriquy’an in the yard was made even more exotic by his being with Ser Ricar and the beautiful Blanche, whose tall, wide-shouldered good looks were admired-from afar-by every apprentice at Master Pye’s. More boys had been injured swashbuckling to win her attention than any other girl’s in the square.

Edmund, who had charge of the yard for most purposes these days, had the gates opened to admit them and never gave it a thought. Ser Ricar had saved almost every one of them from the increasingly violent attacks of the King’s enemies. His sister Mary had been attacked, knocked down, and kicked-and then saved by Ser Ricar. Nancy had been forced to decline service in the palace-the dream of her youth-because their mother would not allow her to walk unaccompanied through the increasingly dangerous streets.

There was a rumour that Jack Drake was back.

Spring was bringing more ills than reliefs, except for frozen young men whose numb fingers caused accidents during the winter. And as the tournament was coming apace, the yard was overflowing with work.

Blanche was taken into Master Pye’s house, where his wife put her in a small room with its own fire and waited on her as if she was the Queen in person.

In the kitchen, Ser Ricar drank mulled ale against the cold rain.

The black man drank only water.

Up close, Edmund found him handsome in a disconcerting and alien way. His features were regular, his eyes large and well spaced and deeply intelligent.

Nor did he appear to be under a vow of silence. At the table, when he broke bread, he inclined his head and spoke-some foreign words that sounded like a prayer.

Master Pye came in with his spectacles dangling around his neck. He glanced at the black man as if he saw such in his wife’s kitchen every day and poured himself a cup of the warmed ale.

“Aethiope?” he asked the black man.

The man rose and bowed, his hands together as if praying. “Dar as Salaam,” he replied.

Master Pye nodded. “Allah Ak’bhar,” he said.

The infidel nodded.

“You speak the pagan tongue?” Edmund asked his master.

“Pagan? Not so fast, young Edmund. Heretical, perhaps.” He shrugged. “Dar as Salaam-the greatest city in the world.” He smiled. “Fine swords.” He shrugged. “Not really the best armourers.”

“You went there?” Edmund asked.

Master Pye frowned. “I was on a ship in the harbour eight days, wind bound. Went ashore and didn’t get made a slave.” He shrugged. “When I was young and foolish.”

The black man had a habit of sitting perfectly still.

“This man is someone important. What happened?” Master Pye was in a hurry.

Edmund shook his head. “Ser Ricar was there.”

The Order knight shook his head. He wrote on a wax tablet and Master Pye looked at it.

“Random has a clerk who speaks Ifriquy’a. Or Wahele or Bemba, I forget which.” Master Pye took his own wax tablet, wrote a note and put his ring on it to seal it. “Take this to Ser Gerald.”

Edmund took the tablet.

Master Pye gestured with his hand. “I think you should run.”

Ser Gerald Random came in person, stumping along with his master clerk who handled all his foreign shipments.

His clerk wore a gold ring and black cloak like a man of property. He bowed with his hands together.

The black man returned the bow most courteously.

The clerk spoke.

The black man answered.

After two exchanges, the black man spoke at some length.

On the fourth exchange, he smiled. It transformed his face.

The clerk looked up. “He’s a messenger. He’s looking for-for Magister Harmodius.”

“He’s a little late,” Ser Gerald said.

“He says he came ashore from the Venike ships; that the Golden Leopard refused to serve or house him, and he intended to leave Harndon at first light.” The man spread his hands and smiled. “He apologized for killing four men, but said that they attacked a woman, and he cannot allow such a thing.”

Two hours had passed since the two matched giants in ebony and ivory had stumbled into the yard. They’d had enough reports of the carnage in Palm Alley to know who had attacked Blanche and who had died.

“He seems unconcerned,” Ser Gerald growled.

His clerk shook his head. “Boss, I was there a year. I met men like this. They have a saying, ‘That which is, is.’ And they say, Inshallah, which means, ‘Let it be as God wills.’”

“Deus Veult!” Ser Gerald said. He nodded.

Ser Ricar nodded.

“No wonder they get along,” Edmund said, not very loud.

Master Pye leaned in. “I have a shop to run. We have a hundred items to deliver in fifteen days. And my gut feeling is that this is going to make a storm of shit.” He looked at Ser Ricar. “Can you hide him?”

Ser Ricar nodded.

The clerk spoke to the infidel, and he shook his head vehemently.

“He says he has a mission and he must go. He says that if we’ll hide him for one night, he’ll be gone by daybreak.” The clerk smiled. “He says if we’d retrieve his horse, he’d be eternally grateful.”

Ser Gerald rolled his eyes.

“Grateful enough for me to get a long look at his sword?” Master Pye asked.

An hour later, while Ser Gerald dickered with a bored Venike factor for a sea-sick stallion, all the apprentices and journeymen gathered in the Master’s shop around the clean table he kept there. Nothing went on that table but finished metal and parchment; today he laid his wife’s third best linen table cloth atop it after sweeping it, and the infidel knight-all the apprentices agreed he must be a knight-drew his sword and laid it on the table.

The strong daylight from the gable overhead made the blade seem to ripple and move.

Every metalworker in the room sighed.

The sword was a hand longer than the longest sword the shop had ever made, and swept in a gradual curve from the long, two-hand hilt all the way to the clipped point with its rebated false edge. The grip was white ivory from the undead mammoths of the deep south, and the crossguard was plain steel. Set into the blade-a masterpiece of pattern welding-were runes.

“Are the runes silver, Master?” Edmund asked. The colour of the runes was just barely perceptible as different from the rest of the blade.

Master Pye shook his head. “Oh, mercy no, Edmund. They are steel. Steel set into the steel.”

“Look at the finish,” murmured Duke. He had become the shop’s expert of finishing, and he now had a dozen boys working for him.

Sam Vintner, the most junior man present, was trying not to breathe, but he sighed. “So beautiful!” he said.

Tom leaned very close. “Magicked,” he said.

The infidel was on his toes, watching them very carefully. He was very tense.

The clerk made reassuring noises.

“He says-he says that in his own country, he would never allow any but his master or the Sultan to touch his sword. He says his master has filled it with power.”

Master Pye nodded. “Aye, lads. It’s full of power.” He went to a cabinet in the wall behind his prie-dieu and opened it with a word. The journeymen all knew what it was-a secret cabinet with a hermetical lock. Only the older boys knew how to open it-it was where the precious metals were kept.

Master Pye took out a set of spectacles that appeared to have lenses of faceted jewels. He leaned over the sword and put the jewels over his eyes.

“Sweet Mary, Queen of the heavens and mother of God,” he said.

He took them off and handed them to Edmund, who had never used them before. In fact, Edmund, now the senior journeyman in a shop big enough to be called a factory, was learning that Master Pye had more secrets than a necromancer.

Edmund put them on. The cabinet shone with energy in mage light.

The sword lit the room.

“What do you see, lad?” Master Pye asked him.

“The sword!” Edmund said.

“Aye,” Master Pye said. “It is a sword in the aethereal, too.” He pointed at the cabinet, which was merely a point source in mage light. “Things that are magicked are like shadows, and the hermetical praxis burns like a flame in the aethereal.”

“But this is a sword,” Edmund said. He took off the glasses and handed them to Tom, who was bouncing impatiently.

The infidel was still nervous. He spoke.

The clerk translated, after a long pause. “He asks if any of us know Harmodius.”

Tom put a hand on his master’s arm. “He’s got a magick ring,” he said, looking through the jewels at the paynim.

“Aye. He’s trouble, and no mistake. What do you boys reckon, when you see a sword that’s a sword in both the real and the aethereal?” Master Pye was pedantic, because he was always teaching.

They all looked at each other.

Edmund said slowly, “That it will function as a sword. In the aethereal, too.”

Master Pye gave him the glance of approval that they all treasured. He was not big on praise, was Master Pye. But he was more than fair. “Indeed, boys. That’s what is called a Fell Sword. Except that that’s a Fell Sword that will cut in the real or in the aethereal.” He bent over it and fitted a very pragmatic and ordinary loupe in his eye.

“I wonder who made it?” he asked.

The clerk repeated the question, and the infidel knight began to answer. He spoke for some time, and long before he was done, the clerk began writing.

“He says his master re-made it. But he says that it was made more than a thousand years ago.”

Edmund all but choked.

Master Pye nodded. “Ahh!” he said, with utter delight. “It is one of the six!” He lifted the sword from the table, and in that gesture, he was transformed from a tall, ungainly man with bulgy eyes and bad breath to a hero of legend whose shadow fell over the table like a figure of menace.

“Who is your master, my lord?” he asked.

The clerk repeated the words.

The infidel spoke. “Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ’Aḥmad bin Rušd.” He bowed. His eyes were on the sword.

Master Pye smiled. “I confess to a very boyish inclination to try and cut something with it.” He carefully put it on the table, and returned to being a bent-shouldered man in late middle-age with a fringe of hair and bulging eyes. “His master is Al Rashidi.”

The journeymen all breathed in together.

“The Magus!” Edmund said.

Master Pye pointed at the tiny sign of an eye emerging from the sun. “The very same.” He offered his right hand to the infidel.

The black man took his hand.

Master Pye did something with his hand-changed grip somehow.

The infidel knight grinned. “Ah-rafiki!” he said.

“He says, ‘Oh, friend!’” said the clerk.

Master Pye nodded. He turned.

“Boys, that’s one of the six-on a table in our shop. I expect that in the next quarter hour, we’ll have the most complete set of weights, measures and dimensions for that sword as exist in all the world. Eh?”

He took the clerk by the shoulder and led him-and the infidel, who didn’t want to leave his weapon-out of the shop.

“Six?” Duke asked.

Tom whistled. “Don’t you know anything?”

Duke gave him a look that promised bruised knuckles. Duke had made journeyman on pure talent, and lacked the book learning of the other journeymen.

“Hieronimus Magister was the greatest magus of the Archaics,” Edmund said. “You should read his essay on the property of metals. It is the origin of proper study.” He shrugged. “At any rate, he was the greatest of mages. In their world, he is treated as a prophet.” He pointed out the door, where the black man had gone. “When the Umroth attacked, he made a hundred swords for the Emperor’s guard to use against the not-dead.”

Tom was measuring and Sam was writing everything in his neat hand on wax.

“At the end of the last Umroth war, only six remained. They kill-both here and in the aethereal. But strange events follow them-weather, monsters, the Wild, assassins.” Edmund shrugged. “I thought they were a myth.”

Duke reached out-always the boldest of them-and picked up the great curved sword.

“Holy Mother of God,” he said.

He, too, seemed to grow in stature and dignity.

“Oh,” he breathed. He put the sword down, carefully. “Oh-my God.”

As Duke was never impressed by anything, Edmund couldn’t stop himself. He plucked up the sword.

Once, as a child, Edmund had gone with his mother and sisters to the cathedral and there, by chance, he had been standing in the nave when the sun emerged from the clouds and shone directly through the great central rose window of the cathedral. All around him, light exploded into bloom and in that moment, he had felt the touch of God-the direct, intangible presence of the universe and all wisdom, and everything: his sister’s laughter, his mother’s whisper, the priest’s hands, the passage of the smoking censor through the perfumed air, the perfection of its arc and the gleam of its silver shell; and every dust mote and every hint of the last chord of the last hymn and the whispers of the nuns and the gleam of a rich woman’s buttoned sleeve-everything made sense.

Edmund had never forgotten that moment. It was at the heart of his craftsmanship.

And now he relived it in half the beat of his heart. He was the sword. The sword was in him and over him. And everything, everywhere, made sense.

He regained control of himself-aware of a nearly overpowering urge to use the blade on something-anything-to feel its perfection in culmination, almost exactly the feeling he had when he lay beside Anne and kissed her and wanted more. To finish.

To be complete.

Instead, he laid the sword gradually down on the table.

“Be careful,” he said to Sam. “But you must try it.”

“Can you imagine wearing that every day?” Edmund asked Duke.

Duke sighed. “Oh-aye. I can imagine.” He smiled weakly. “I wanted to cut you in half, just to see if I could.”

Neither laughed.

An hour later, a boy came from Prior Wishart with a note for Ser Ricar. By then the sword was returned to its owner, who seemed profoundly more at ease to have it at his side. He was seated at a table in the yard, writing out words in his odd flowing runes at the dictation of Ser Gerald’s clerk.

The clerk made an odd gesture. “He speaks Etruscan well eno’,” he said. “I’m trying to give him a few words in Alban.”

“Etruscan?” Master Pye asked. He shook his head.

Ser Ricar appeared at his elbow and handed him a note.

Master Pye took the note and read it.

“Christ on the cross,” he snapped. “Boys! On me!”

Long before the King’s Guardsmen came, Blanche was gone, and her bed was stripped and the maids were washing in the yard. The black man vanished as if he had never been, and Ser Ricar vanished with him.

The guardsmen searched in a desultory way. Blanche had friends throughout the palace. The guardsmen were not very interested in finding her, but they had a warrant for her arrest.

When they were gone, Mistress Pye put her arms around her husband. “Bradley Pye,” she said. “I think it is time to get out of this town.”

He was watching the last two guardsmen as they went through his gate.

“Worse ’n you think,” he muttered. “They’re going to suppress the Order.”

His wife crossed herself. “Blessed Saint Thomas,” she said.

Master Pye had tears in his eyes. “My life’s work is here,” he said. “But our secret guards will be gone, now. The prior’s calling his knights away before the King can get to them.”

“So?” his wife asked.

“So we’re naked,” Master Pye said. “And an army of Galles will land in the next day or two. Gerry says the Venike know they’re coming.”

“Gerald Random won’t let us down.” Deirdre Pye shook her head.

“I’d be happy if you were gone,” Master Pye said. “You an’ the maids.”

“Bradley Pye, when will you learn that we’re not hostages? We’re willing hands.” His wife crossed her arms.

Pye pursed his lips. “We’ll see,” he said.

No Galles came the next day, or the next.

Outside the southern walls of the city, the bleachers rose for the tournament, and lists were built. There were lists for foot combat, with oak beams four fingers square that rested on oak posts, so that a knight in full armour, thrown by another, wouldn’t budge the fence. Four feet high, eighteen feet on a side-a bear pit for armoured fighters.

The mounted lists were more complicated; a central barricade the height of a horse’s haunches, walled in oak boards, the whole length of the course, with another oak fence all the way around the outside, a hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet wide.

Both lists were nearly complete. At the foot lists, a dozen pargeters and painters had begun hanging painted canvas and leather decorations that looked, for all the world, like solid gold and silver pedestals holding magnificently decorated shields.

The Master Pargeter already had a master roll of every knight and squire expected to fight. On the ninth and tenth pages, shields had been added to indicate the late entries-Galles who had not yet arrived, and Occitans who were rumoured, even now, to be en route.

The royal arms decorated the royal pavilion-the King was a noted jouster and had every intention to participate-and the stands.

The Master Pargeter had narrow red lines through a number of coats of arms, as well, from the original roll. The Earl of Towbray was no longer included. The Count of the Borders had been ordered to take a force of Royal Foresters into the west country in response to raids from the Wild. Edward Daispansay-the Lord of Bain-had taken his retainers and left the court a month before. Only his son Thomas remained, and the difference on his arms-an eight-pointed star-was, thankfully, an easy correction to paint.

The Count D’Eu, the Champion’s cousin and a famous lance, had just withdrawn that morning.

But the biggest change was that the Queen’s arms had been ordered stricken from the record. Desiderata’s arms-the Royal Arms of Occitan, quartered with Galle and Alba and supported by a unicorn and a Green Man, were well known throughout the kingdom, and her knights had, on other occasions, been the most cohesive team after the King’s. Now her arms were banned, which led to a great deal of speculation among the workmen, and not a single one of her knights was to break a lance or swing a sword in the lists.

Ser Gerald Random, the King’s “merchant knight,” stood on his wooden foot, supported by a thick ebony cane with a head of solid gold, watching the workmen. Around him stood most of his officers for the tournament, and with him was the new Lord Mayor of Harndon, Ailwin Darkwood, and the past mayor, Ser Richard Smythe.

A dozen sailors were rigging an enormous awning over the bleachers.

“I saw ’em do it in Liviapolis,” Ser Gerald said. “Mind you, they had a magister to seal it.”

The Lord Mayor made a hasty wave of his hand. “God between us and evil. Until we’re rid of the new bishop, don’t even speak of such things.”

Random spat in annoyance. “Gentles,” he said, “among us, we control most of the flow of capital in this city.” He looked around. “Are we going to stand for this?” He pointed his elegant cane at the two pargeter’s apprentices who were carefully taking down the Queen’s arms from the central viewing stand over the mounted lists.

“What choice do we have?” Ser Richard asked. “I don’t have an army. Nor am I much of a jouster.”

Ser Gerald looked around carefully. “There’s Jacks moving into the city,” he said. “And there’s Galles coming. And a tithe of fools who ape the Galles.”

Darkwood spoke very quietly. “And Occitans. The Queen’s brother won’t just stand by and let her be arrested.”

Ser Gerald looked around. “Let’s speak frankly, gentles, as it becomes merchants. Leave lying to the lords. The King’s champion and his cronies are leading us into a civil war, as sure as the wind blows.”

The other two men shifted uncomfortably.

“And if they fight here, in our streets-” Ser Gerald narrowed his eyes. “Imagine fire in our houses. And soldiers. Looting.”

“Sweet Christ, we’d all be ruined.” Ser Richard shook his head. “It would never happen here.”

Ser Gerald looked around again. “Since my adventure last year among the Moreans,” he said with some authority, “I have friends among the Etruscans.”

“So I’ve noted, to my discontent,” admitted Darkwood. “There were Venike and Fiorian merchants who got their furs before I did!”

Ser Gerald raised an eyebrow. “There was fur eno’ for every house,” he said. “And one of my principal backers asked that I make sure the Etruscans weren’t cut out. Any road-the Venike captain, Ser Giancarlo, what docked Thursday last-he’s brought me news.” He looked around again. “He says the King of Galle has ordered all this. That it is a plot-that de Vrailly works for the King of Galle. That he will seize the kingdom and hold it for his master.”

Ailwin Darkwood tugged his beard. “I’ve always thought so. Since the assault on our coinage started.”

Ser Gerald was surprised. “But-”

Darkwood shrugged. “I take my own precautions. What do you suggest we do?”

Ser Gerald raised an eyebrow. “Nothing against the King,” he said.

Ser Richard looked furtive. “This is treason.”

Ser Gerald shook his head vehemently. “Nothing against the King, I said.”

Master Ailwin and Ser Gerald both glared at Ser Richard. “What do you have planned?” Ser Richard asked, but his body language clearly said that he was not with them.

An hour later he was sharing wine with the Archbishop of Lorica, who affected unconcern.

“Fear nothing, good Ser Richard. Some of your countrymen are traitors, but the King is safe. Indeed, I think I can tell you that in the next few hours, a plot will be revealed that will do much to allay your fears.”

Ser Richard rose. “Random and Darkwood and Pye, between them, control most of the militia-the Trained Band. They will use it.”

The archbishop laughed. “Peasants with pitchforks? Against belted knights?” He laughed heartily. “I hope they try. In Galle, we encourage them-it thins the herd.”

Ser Richard knew little about war, but he tugged his beard in agitation. “I think your knights may find them formidable, ser. At any rate, I must away. I cannot have my hand in this. After this unpleasantness is over, I’ll need to do business with these men.”

The archbishop escorted him personally to the door of his chamber, saw him handed out the door, and returned to his desk. To his secretary, Maître Gris, a priest and doctor of theology, he said, “That man imagines that when we are done, he can go back to his business.” He shook his head. “Usury and luxury and gluttony.”

His secretary nodded, eyes gleaming.

“We will have the richest church in all the see of Rhum,” the archbishop said.

“And you will be Patriarch,” his secretary said.

They shared a glance. Then the archbishop shook himself free of his dreams and leaned back.

“Fetch me my Archaic scribe,” he said.

The secretary frowned, but he went out, his black robes like a storm cloud.

The archbishop concentrated on a letter explaining-in measured tones-that no priest of the church was subject to any civil or royal law, and that the Manor Court of Lewes had no jurisdiction nor right to hear any case against their reverend father in Christ.

His secretary returned. In tones of quiet disapproval, the man said, “Maître Villon.”

A thin figure in the threadbare scarlet of a lower caste doctor of law bowed deeply.

The archbishop could smell the wine on him. “Maître,” he said sharply.

The red man stood solidly enough. “Your eminence,” he said.

The archbishop gestured sharply at his secretary. “I will handle this,” he said.

His secretary nodded sharply.

The archbishop sat back. “Maître Villon, you understand, I think, why I brought you to Alba.”

Maître Villon’s bloodshot eyes met his and then the doctor of law looked at the parquetry floor in front of him. “I am at your eminence’s will,” he said softly.

“Very much so, I think,” the archbishop said. “Need I go into particulars?”

Maître Villon didn’t raise his eyes. “No, Eminence.”

“Very well. I wish a certain set of events to come to pass. Can you make them happen?”

The man in red nodded. “Yes, Eminence.”

“I wish a man to die.” The archbishop winced at his own words.

“By what means?” the doctor of law asked.

“By your means, Maître Villon.” The archbishop spoke sharply, his voice rising, like a mother speaking to a particularly stupid child.

“By the hermetical arts,” the doctor of law said softly.

The archbishop half rose. “I have not said so!” he said. “And you will keep a civil tongue in your head. Or you will have no tongue at all.”

The red-clad man kept looking at the floor.

“Can you effect this?” the archbishop asked.

The red-clad man shrugged. “Possibly. All things are possible.”

“Today.” The archbishop leaned forward.

The man in red sighed. “Very well,” he said. “Can you have someone get me something he wears? Something he wears often?”

The archbishop seemed about to expostulate, but then paused. “Yes.”

The man in red nodded. “If, perhaps, someone could steal his gloves? I assume he is a gentleman.”

The archbishop was looking elsewhere. “Pfft,” he said.

The man in red ignored him. “And then, later today, we could return his gloves, as if they were found in the street.”

“And you can work your hideous perversion in that little time?”

The man in red bowed. “In your eminence’s service.”

“You try me, Maître Villon. Yet I hold you and all you think dear in my hand.” The archbishop fingered the amulet he wore with his cross.

The man in red shrugged. “It is as you say, Eminence.” He sounded tired, or hopeless, or perhaps both.

As he went out, the secretary glared at him with unconcealed hate.

“How can you allow such a man to live?” he asked.

“Tush, Gilles. That is not your place to ask.” The archbishop frowned. “Have you not asked yourself whether Judas was evil, or whether he was bound to deliver our lord to the cross? And thus merely a tool of God?”

The secretary shrugged. “The scholastica tells me that it was a matter of God using Judas’s evil for His own purposes.”

The archbishop sat back. “If God is free to use evil to further His ends, so then am I.” He looked over his steepled hands. “What of the Almspend woman?”

The secretary shook his head. “She went to a house she has in the country. I sent men. They did not return.” He shrugged. “It has become difficult to hire sell-swords, Eminence. The King’s Guard has hired every armed thug in the city.”

“That’s de Vrailly, preparing for a fight with the commons,” the archbishop said. “We need our own swords. Some swords that don’t wear our livery.”

The secretary nodded. “A man was recommended to me, Eminence. A foreigner, from the far north.”

“Well?” The archbishop was not renowned for his patience.

“I will see if I can contact him. He is very-careful.” The secretary shrugged.

The archbishop smiled. “He sounds Etruscan. Etruscans are the only professionals in these matters. I wish I’d brought a team from Rhum. If he seems suitable, retain him.”

The secretary bowed.

The Count D’Eu was moving briskly about Harndon, paying his debts. Tailors and grocers and leatherworkers and all the trades who supported his household, he visited in person and paid in silver.

Many a Harndoner who cursed Galles every day had reason to bless him, and Gerald Random shared an embrace. “It’ll turn,” he said, somewhat daring. “You should stay.”

The count met his eye. “No,” he said. “It will not turn. Ward the Queen. They mean her harm. And the King, in time, I think.”

“And you will just leave?” Ser Gerald said. He held up a hand. “I know-”

The Galle shook his head. “No, Monsieur. I know you are a good homme d’armes and an honest merchant. So I will only say this: the rumour from my home is that the Wild is coming to my doorstep. I wish to go home and do the work for which God has chosen me.”

Ser Random bowed. “Can’t say fairer than that,” he said.

At the door, the Count D’Eu slapped his magnificent gold plaque belt and turned to his squire, Robert. “Young man, what have I done with my gloves?”

Robert looked around wildly. “You had them, my lord. You wore them when we were in the tailor’s. With the bishop’s men.”

The count frowned. “Eh bien,” he said.

The sun was setting over the distant mountains when the Gallish ships appeared in the firth. Word spread up through the town-almost every man from the corner beggars by the Order of Saint John’s almost empty hostel to the Royal Guards on the walls knew what the ships contained. Men and women went to evening mass with their eyes on the firth.

They made the riverside docks only at first light-the packed men onboard had had to endure one more damp, cold night. But in the bright sunshine of a spring morning, the first day of Holy Week, the ships unloaded onto the same quays where the Venike round ships had unloaded and marketed their wares. But whereas the Venike brought silk and satin and samite and spices, the Galles brought more than three hundred lances of Gallish chivalry-big, tall, strong men. Each Gallish lance contained a knight and his squire, also armoured, and a rabble of servants and pages, in numbers that varied according to the social status of the knight.

The Sieur Du Corse, a famous routier, led the Galles down the gangplanks, and then stood, a baton in his hand, as the ships disgorged his men, their armour, their weapons, and all their horses. The horses were not in good shape, and some were unable to stand.

The King’s Champion, Jean de Vrailly, came in person, mounted and in a glittering new harness, the one of blued steel he would wear for the tourney. He was cheered in some streets.

He dismounted easily and embraced Du Corse, and they mimicked friendship with the slippery grabs of men covered in butter-steel arms grappled steel breasts. But the display seemed genuine enough.

“I asked for a company of Genuans. For some bowmen-or Ifriquy’ans like the King of Sichilia uses.” De Vrailly pursed his lips. “But your lances look fine, Blaise. Magnificent.”

Blaise Du Corse was as tall as de Vrailly, with hair as black as de Vrailly’s was white-gold. He was from the southern mountains of Galle, where the Kingdom of Arelat and the Kingdom of Galle and the Etruscan states all came together in a region of poverty and war and uncivil society. A region famous for soldiers.

“Ah, my lord. Truly, I meant to bring you more, but our liege the King has forbidden it. And more particularly, your friend the Senechal de Abblemont has forbidden it.” Du Corse shrugged. “I almost didn’t come. And Jean.” He put a hand on de Vrailly’s arm. “We have to go back. As soon as we’ve done the King’s work here.”

“Back?” de Vrailly said.

“There’s an army of the Wild in Arelat,” Du Corse said. “No-spare me, sweet friend. I’ve seen some heads. No fearmonger could create such a thing. They say that the Nordikaans have war on their very borders. They say that the Kingdom of Dalmatis is already fallen.”

“Blessed sacrament!” De Vrailly took a deep breath. “And the King? And the seneschal?”

“Are raising the whole of the Arrièrre Ban. Every knight in Galle will go east before midsummer.” Du Corse raised both eyebrows. “So I am told to say, privately, hurry.”

They watched a dozen sailors and longshoremen winching a heavy war horse up out of the belly of the largest round ship.

“Abblemont wished to point out to you,” Du Corse continued, “that you have almost a thousand of our kingdom’s lances. A tithe of our total strength, and in many cases”-Du Corse grinned-“the best men.” His eyes went to a young woman on a balcony, waving. “What a pretty girl. Is Alba full of pretty women?”

De Vrailly frowned. “Perhaps. Midsummer? Bah. Well-we will see.”

Du Corse frowned, but it was more a comic face than an angry one. “I cannot see anything here that can stand against a thousand of our kind,” he said. He winked at someone over de Vrailly’s shoulder.

A full bowshot away, the archbishop turned from the windowed balcony of his Harndon episcopal palace. He smiled easily to his secretary. “So-we have enough iron to hold the streets. Please tell Maître Villon to see that it is done.”

“See that what is done?” asked his secretary.

The archbishop smiled. “Best you not know, my son,” he said.

He sat at his desk and reviewed a set of documents he had had prepared. Each of them bore the bold signature and seal of the Count D’Eu.

He sighed, and inserted them, one by one, with his own hands into a small leather trunk-the sort of box lawyers used for scrolls and wills.

He locked the trunk, and threw the key into his fireplace. Then he rose. “I will be attending the King,” he told his chamberlain, who bowed.

Desiderata had spent three whole days in prayer, most of it on her knees. She was a strong, fit woman and by her arts had more knowledge of the babe within her than most midwives might have managed, so her piety no more affected her than to make her wish for better cushions on her private prie-dieu, where she knelt in front of a magnificent picture of the Virgin in a rose garden.

She spent a day perfecting her ability to read aloud from her Lives of the Female Saints and Legends of Good Women while moving about inside her inner palace. It was far more difficult than she had originally expected-reading aloud clearly occupied more of the waking mind than she had thought.

Despite which, by midday on the second day, knees aching like fire and her back near to separating from her breastbones with the pain of kneeling, she had it. She needed the outward show of piety to cow her new “ladies,” all of whom were spies, and none of whom had the brains of a newborn kitten.

The Queen knew she was in difficulty. The world around her had moved from long shadows to open war; her people were all gone except Diota, and she knew that an open, legal charge of adultery was in the works.

They had even stooped to attack her laundrywoman. The charge-of sorcery-was absurd. But it had effectively isolated her. Without knights or squires or any ladies she could trust, she had no word from the outside.

The archbishop might have been shocked to know that the Queen scarcely troubled herself about any of that. She allowed herself to worry that Diota might be killed, or Blanche taken. Beyond that, she expended not a whit of her powers or her thoughts.

Instead, she bent most of her conscious thought to the dark thing that dwelt in the palace foundations. Or perhaps merely visited them.

Somehow, it was her enemy. She had known this the moment she touched it, deep in the old corridors where Becca Almspend had taken her. Its enmity was as familiar as the touch of a lover. She wondered if she had awakened it with her touch, or Becca with her hermetical studies. Or whether it was always there. Some days it seemed completely to be absent.

She bit her lip. Her outward self almost lost the thread of the passage she was reading aloud-she fought down a wave of petty pains-her breasts, her hips, her back, her knees.

Any thought of her husband hurt her to her core.

Almost, she could accept the charge of adultery. Because in one short year, she had come from love to something very like hate. A cold, menacing hate. A hate that chewed at the edge of her waking mind and threatened her powers and her confidence and her very awareness of herself as herself.

And again, as surely as old Harmodius had banished the daemon, she banished her thoughts of her husband and locked them away.

And followed the thread of black that ran from her rooms down into the depths of the palace.

No one had ever taught the Queen to walk free of her body, but it had seemed perfectly reasonable to her, since she was very young, that if one could invert the normal, ordering one’s palace, one could walk free through a door in that palace and out into the waking world. And as was often the case for Desiderata, the thought was the action, and she had attempted it.

Now she walked the winds almost at will. And hence this gentle and pious deception-the ladies all watching her in amazement as she spent her days in prayer. Her careful practice-it could be quite painful to be interrupted when walking abroad.

With a last, inward check and a mental sigh, she released her hold on her temporal body and drifted clear.

Lady Agnes was kneeling with her ample behind firmly seated on a stool hidden in her skirts. This did not amuse or disturb the Queen-she merely noted it. She had noted before that the world of colour and high emotion that was her life in the real was muted when she let her spirit walk the winds.

She allowed herself to sink through the floor.

She knew from experience that many parts of the palace were warded-indeed, almost every home, even the lowliest peasant’s cot, had wards to protect the inhabitants against ghosts, not-dead and wind-walkers.

Oddly, many such wards were placed on doors but not walls, on windows and not on floor joists. She knew-with some bitterness-that she could not escape the bounds of the palace. It was a warded fortress, and what was in would stay in just as surely as that without would stay out.

But inside much of its confines she could move at will, if she kept her concentration pure. She felt the extreme cold of stone that never saw the sun, and then she was warmed-a floor below, the Royal Chamberlain saw to the King’s chamber as his clean sheets were set to his bed.

She did not linger to see what sign there might be of other women. She needed no further proof of who the King was. Or what he had done.

Almost, that scrap of thought was enough to destroy her concentration. But Desiderata’s will was a pure, hard thing like eastern steel, and she went down, and down again, bands of light alternating with darkness as she went into the old halls below the palace, always following the black thread that she had found in her own fireplace.

But when she entered the deep corridor-the old path, or road, that Lady Almspend had first showed them-it was like returning to a house from a trip to find that mould and rot had set in. The corridor was so full of the black ropes of the twisted thing’s sorcery that she was almost entangled.

She was not quiet enough.

The blackness was everywhere-and she hovered above it, unwilling to touch it even in incorporeal form. But she could see it with a true sight, and see how much of it there was-enough thread to make a hundred carpets, piled in loops and whorls throughout the deepest corridor, and there, where she had stopped it with Almspend and Lady Mary, stood a wall of black.

Twice before, Desiderata had come here and driven the walls back to their origin, the stone set in the oldest wall of the castle.

Now it knew her.

The threads came at her, all at once-an infinity of black silk flying through black air like a dark net.

Desiderata set her aethereal form on the level with the floor and allowed the silk threads to permeate her non-being.

Whatever had prepared this trap had expected a more solid body.

She felt its hate.

She took in a great breath, and as she exhaled, she made her breath the very spirit of spring, filled with sun and light, love and laughter, green leaves and new flowers and the smell of grass in the sunshine and lilacs in the dark.

Her conjuring drove back the threads as easily as a good sword would cut through snow-more, as the threads melted as they contacted her force, withering, retreating and unmaking as she advanced.

She spread her incorporeal hands.

Between them a great globe of glowing gold began to form.

“Give us the babe!” whispered the ribbons of black.

She gave them the globe, instead. And it floated forward, like a sun, a veritable sun, burning and lighting with a brilliance that no mortal eye could tolerate.

It passed the wall of black-and illuminated it.

A mighty pulse of power struck at her, like a child swatting a fly, and she rose on the energy and retreated before it, her own casting burrowing like a woodworm into the coils of her adversary.

Once more it struck, this time with a ravening dog of many heads and teeth-a slavering horror that emerged from the wreckage of the black aethereal curtain-to savage nothing but a ghost.

She felt the entity respond-and understand.

It lashed at her with pure ops.

The ramifications of the blow flung her out of the corridor and almost as far as the living world.

Only then did Desiderata begin to know fear.

But fear usually made her stronger. She controlled the flight of her incorporeal form and steadied it-laid a trap in the aethereal for any immediate pursuit and saw with savage satisfaction that her guess was correct.

And still the entity was incapable of quenching her initial casting.

She fled to the real, hoping that her work was done.

In the real, her aching body was still kneeling, and her lips still moved. Saint Ursula. She knew the tale all too well. Her consciousness snapped back into the body in time to prevent a collapse.

She could not prevent her head from falling forward over the book.

Far beneath her, she could feel her great praxis moving, like a living thing, into the very heart of her adversary’s darkness.

“If your grace is done praying,” Lady Agnes said, her voice a whine of accusation, “I’m sure we have tasks before us!”

Whatever else might have been said was interrupted by the chamber doors being flung wide.

There, framed in the doorway, was the Archbishop of Lorica. At his shoulder was the King’s new chancellor, the Sieur de Rohan, and behind them-almost in shadow-the King.

She started to rise, and her knees and back protested so that she almost fell. She-the most graceful of women-pinned by her pregnancy. She fought the urge to whimper, gritted her teeth, and forced herself to her feet. The archbishop’s every sinew expressed his excitement. Never before had Desiderata so completely seen expressed the phrase trembling with excitement. It was as if the man had a fever.

De Rohan, de Vrailly’s former standard bearer and most dangerous minion, was, by contrast, almost bored. Merely fulfilling the function to which he’d been appointed.

And the King-his face was almost slack. His eyes flickered.

Oh, my love. When did you become so weak? Or were you always so?

“Your grace!” said the archbishop. His voice, always high, was shrill. He calmed himself. “Your grace. I come before you with a writ signed by the King.”

“Yes?” she said. While she knew what it must be, she had, in her heart, expected the King to refuse to sign it.

The archbishop produced a writ. She could see the King’s seal.

“I arrest you for the treason of murder with sorcery,” he said, his voice loud and piercing.

She was taken by surprise. “Murder? With sorcery?” she asked, as if struck by lightning.

“That you did work the death of your lover, the Count D’Eu, by the arts of Satan, when he renounced you as a lover and threatened to leave the court and reveal you!” said the archbishop.

Her so-called ladies hastened from the room, leaving her alone.

“Search her room,” muttered de Rohan. He had with him a dozen Royal officers-all recent appointees, and no members of the Royal Guard at all.

“This is infamous,” the Queen said. “Untrue, foolish, and pernicious.” She paused. “The Count D’Eu is dead?” she asked. She remembered his hard arm under hers at the Christmas revel on the ice.

The King stepped forward from his place behind his officers. “Madame,” he said gravely, “I’ll do you the honour of pretending that you do not already know.”

Desiderata didn’t back a step. “Tell me, then,” she said flatly.

“We have all your letters to him,” the King said, the ire in his voice now openly menacing.

A royal sheriff handed a leather trunk to the archbishop. He tried to open it, found it locked, and handed it back to the sheriff.

“That’s none of mine,” said the Queen. “That is not mine, and not-”

“Silence, woman!” said the King.

“Your grace, you know where I keep my letters!” the Queen said.

The King looked away. “I do not know you at all,” he said sadly.

With a snap, the little leather trunk opened, and a dozen parchments fell to the floor. The sheriff put his baselard back into its sheath.

From where she stood, the Queen could see that every letter held the Count D’Eu’s seal.

“Do you think he would seal his love letters?” muttered the Queen.

“Who knows what traitors and heretics think?” spat the archbishop. “Confess, and avoid the stake, your grace.”

“Confess what?” Desiderata asked. “I am guiltless. I carry the King’s son. I have never ceased to strive for this kingdom, and the Count D’Eu was never even my friend, much less my lover. This is all absurd.”

The King was reading one of the letters, his face a flaming red. “That you would dare!” he shouted, and threw it in her face.

“Confess to the murder of D’Eu, and the King, in his mercy, will spare your life.” The Sieur de Rohan stood easily, his voice bored. “See to his majesty. He is over-wrought.”

The King was reading another letter.

Desiderata was closer to panic than the old horror under the palace had moved her, but she held her ground. “Your grace, those letters are palpable forgeries. Your grace. You know my hand!”

The King whirled on her, and raised his fist. But he lowered it, his lips quivering with rage, his jowls-had he long had jowls?-making him look more sad than angry. “I thought that I knew you,” he said. “But de Vrailly was right. Take her from my sight.”

“Where, your grace?” asked de Rohan.

“The deepest pit of hell, for all I care,” said the King. He seemed to have aged ten years before their eyes.

The Queen drew herself to her full stature-not just in the real, but in the aethereal.

The archbishop clasped the talisman at his breast. “Do your worst, whore of Satan!” he said. “I am protected against all of your kind.”

Desiderata smiled with all the scorn she could muster. “The difference between you and I,” she said, “is that I would not stoop to destroy you if doing so would save my soul. I make and heal. I bring light to the dark. And when I do, your kind scuttle for the narrow places the light will not reach.”

She took a single step forward, and the archbishop stepped back unconsciously.

She tossed her head. “Where are you taking me?”

As the door closed behind her, she heard de Rohan’s oily voice say, “But your grace, now we must take thought for her brother.”

The Queen whirled. “Your grace!” she shouted.

The sheriff-cowed by her rank and her condition-let go her elbow.

The door opened. Again, the King was framed in it.

The Queen raised her chin. “I demand a trial,” she said.

Her husband paused. Their eyes met.

“I am absolutely guiltless, my lord. No man has known this body save you.” The Queen did not plead. Her anger was plain-and to most men, proved her innocence. No one could act such a part.

“Take her away,” whispered de Rohan.

“This is Alba, not Galle,” said the Queen. “I demand a trial, by my peers, in public.”

Wat Tyler slipped into Harndon amidst the chaos of the arrival of the Galles. His clothes were ruined, and his face wore the marks of heavy weather and constant strain. A gate guard might have questioned him for the great bow on his back alone, but the movement of a thousand armed Galles through the streets had stripped the gates of all but a token force, and those men still on the gates cared for nothing but what was going on inside their city.

As his new ally had promised him.

He crossed the First Bridge with the flood of morning market customers and farmers, and helped unload a wagon in East Cheaping before he walked uphill into the stews behind the docks. He saw more poverty than he remembered from his last visit, and more beggars.

He exchanged a sign with a beggar-master.

The man nodded at his bow. “That won’t win you no friends with the magistrates,” he said. “Only a citizen of Harndon-”

“I know the law,” Tyler said.

“You look like you’ve been in some hard places, brother,” muttered the beggar-master. In fact, he was more than a little afraid of Tyler, who smelled like the wilderness.

Tyler shrugged.

The beggar-master took him to chapter, a gathering of beggars-sanctioned since Archaic times by dukes and kings, and now held in the old agora by the Tower of Winds. The Beggar King sat on the steps of the old Temple of Ios. There, three Archaic stele formed a natural throne of incredibly ancient white marble.

The Beggar King wore a crown of leather. Unlike most kings, he sat alone. He had no court. Nor was he big, nor ferocious-looking. In fact, he was so nondescript in his dirty leathers and old wool, his lanky brown hair shot with grey and his long beard, that he might have been any peasant or out-of-work farmer on the streets.

“Wat Tyler,” he said. “Last I saw you, you was off to win a great victory against the King.”

Tyler shrugged. “We lost.”

The Beggar King nodded. “Well. And now you’re back.”

“Not for long. Does my place still hold?” Tyler asked.

The Beggar King looked around. The senior beggars and beggar-masters grinned.

“Aye, Wat. Your place still holds.” The King laughed.

Tyler took his great bow off his back and leaned on it. “I’ve walked from N’gara,” he said. “I’d be right thankful for a jack of ale and a bowl of something.”

“N’gara?” the Beggar King said. Silence had fallen. “Next you’ll be telling us you met the Faery Knight.”

“Somewhat like that,” Tyler answered.

A fat woman put a jack in his hand.

He raised it in thanks and drank deep. “Comrades,” he said. “That’s the first ale I’ve had in many a month.”

“You were far off in the Wild,” the Beggar King said. “And now you’ve come back-a hard road. You never was a real beggar, Wat. What are you here for this time?”

Tyler shrugged. “I’ll hide a month or two. Pick up some lads as want to fight. And be away before summer comes.”

“Same as always,” the Beggar King said.

“Aye,” Tyler said.

“And you aren’t just here because the tournament is upon us, and there’s money to be gained everywhere?” the Beggar King asked.

“Tournament?” Wat asked.

“Christ and his saints, man-you must have been in the land of the faeries. There’s a great tourney to be fought, a million sculls to pick the pockets of and a thousand shills to fleece.” He grinned. “If we’re not killed by Galle routiers first.”

“Routiers?” Tyler asked.

“Killing always did get your attention, Wat. The King’s champion, de Vrailly-”

“May he rot in hell,” Tyler said.

“Ah-sometimes we even agree. May he rot in hell-he sent to Galle for a fresh army. And they sent him one, but they ha’ troubles of their own, seemingly, and we get the tall knights and the scrapings of their jails. They kept all their proper soldiers home to fight boglins.” He laughed.

Tyler nodded. “Don’t talk to me about boglins,” he said. “I’ve had a bellyful.”

The younger of the female beggar-masters cackled. “You home to stay, then?”

Tyler shook his head. “No, Lise. I ain’t, like I said. I’ll be gone afore midsummer.”

“You’ll help us kill some Galles?” the Beggar King asked.

Tyler nodded. “You know me, King.”

“We know you,” the Beggar King said. “Lucky you came,” he admitted. “We don’t have the muscle we’ll need for these Galle bastards.”

Tyler nodded. “They die, pretty much as easy as any other man,” he said, his thumbs rubbing the beeswaxed wood of his great bow.

Lise stepped forward-a big, handsome ruin of a woman with a red nose and lank black hair. “One o’ my girls-robbed, throat cut. Scale Alley.” She folded her arms. “Three Galles, all new off the boat. Crack says he’d know ’em again.”

The Beggar King rubbed his hands together and looked at Wat.

Wat sighed. “You making me pay dues, King?” he asked.

“No,” the King said slowly. “No. You can walk away. You earned it a hundred times. But-if’n you want help, well, we want help, too.”

Tyler frowned, thinking of his task.

But some ties were thicker than blood or water. He turned his eyes to Lise without moving his head. “You tell me where to find ’em. Livery, lodging. All the usual.”

She came up and kissed him. “Some o’ we missed you, Wat.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the hired killers,” Tyler said, with a spark of his ancient self.

The sway of her hips held no promise for him, though, and the spark died.

He was given a space on a floor under a tavern. And he began to eat, and enjoy being warm-the two greatest pleasures left him.

The Queen’s arrest was a wonder-an expected shock, but still a shock when it happened. The sheer number of Galles in the street was another shock to every Harndoner, and the sheer criminality of their servants and spearmen was beyond anything the people of Harndon had ever seen.

Thirty men and a dozen women died the first night. Twenty Gallish spearmen burned down an inn when they were thrown out-for theft. They killed every man who came through the door out of the smoke.

The High Sheriff went to the palace for soldiers with whom to make arrests, and never returned.

In broad daylight, a party of routiers stormed a jeweller’s booth in the market by Cheapside. They killed the man and his daughter and took all their gold, silver, and copper-including some fine enamels.

And then they swaggered through the rapidly closing stalls, picking valuables off other shop tables. A merchant who protested was stabbed and left kneeling in the muck, his guts spilling around his hands.

They sacked a dozen more shops, gathering adherents as they went, and then went down to the riverbank as if they owned the place, and laid their loot on blankets to divide it-exactly as if they were in a city taken by storm.

It was there that the Trained Band found them.

The Trained Band was a muster of all the very best trained and armed citizens of Harndon. Any man or woman who was formally signed as an apprentice to one of the seventy-three recognized guilds or trades was automatically made a citizen, with freedom of the city and the right to bear arms and travel, but many other people had the same rights; most householders who held in freehold, and most servants of the two great priories, and the King’s household and the Queen’s, and hundreds of others-fencing masters, for example, and school teachers. And a variety of men and women who’d been granted the status and cherished it-including some knights and nobles.

The muster of the city was the assembly of every man or strong woman who owned and could carry weapons. The Trained Band was the pick of the whole. The elite of the Trained Band tended to be from the guilds that made and used weapons; the bowyers, the fletchers, the butchers, the armourers and the sword smiths.

The Trained Band was ready at a minute’s notice to be the armoured fist of the city, but they generally worked at the behest of the Sheriff and the Lord Mayor, and they tended to obey the niceties of the law.

Michael de Burgh was a fencing master and owned a prosperous tavern. He had been a soldier, and it was rumoured that he ran a string of brothels. But he was one of the eight captains of the Trained Band, and he was the man on duty. The routiers on the riverbank gathered in knots, weapons in hand, as the Trained Band marched up to the edge of Cheaping Street.

De Burgh stepped out of the ranks of his spearmen.

“Throw down your weapons,” he shouted in a voice fit to wake the dead and make them do drill. “Throw them down and lie down. You are all-”

He looked down in surprise at the heavy arbalest bolt that had punched through his heavy coat of plates and the mail beneath it. He was not a slim man, and the bolt went into him up to the fletchings.

A shocked screech.

But he knew his duty. “Under-arrest…” he managed before he pitched over.

The men behind him in the Band knew their duty, too.

Battles are generally the result of someone making a serious mistake. The Battle of Cheaping Street was the result of two sets of mistakes. On the one hand, the routiers had never encountered resistance from townspeople or peasants. Their experience in Galle was that the only men who would face them were knights. All other resistance would melt away before their ferocity and superior equipment and skill.

The men of the Trained Band were used to facing opponents who were better trained-or monstrous. They made up for their disparity in fine equipment and discipline. But they had never experienced a hard fight in their own city. Out in the Wild-yes. Not in the streets around the market.

The routiers charged with a yell of fury that shook the windows around the market.

The left end of the Band’s line didn’t loose a single bolt, as they were unready for immediate violence. They hadn’t seen Captain de Burgh get hit, and they had no idea what was going on. Many men at the left of the line were still shrugging into hauberks and buckling their breast-and-backs. Men had sausages dangling out of their mouths.

At their end, the routiers struck like wolves at a flock of sheep, and men-especially the rear rankers-broke, ran and were cut down. Most of the routiers had bills or poleaxes, and they used them cruelly, killing the wounded on the ground, hacking militiamen down as they turned to run. A generation of fletchers’ apprentices died in seconds. The Butcher’s Guild lost a master, four journeymen and a dozen apprentices as the line caved in.

At the other end of the line, the result was utterly different. The armourers had been right behind the captain. They had been the first men called, and the first in armour.

The Captain of the Crossbows-a stepping stone to the command of the whole Band-ordered his men to loose their bolts.

Sixty arbalest bolts struck the front rank of the charging routiers. The volley was sufficiently crisp that the bolts striking home sounded like a wooden mallet striking meat.

The armourers, on the word of command, levelled their heavy spears and charged.

Edmund-front rank, right marker, corporal-was calm enough to spare a glance at the crispness of his front rank before he caught a screaming Galle under the chin with his heavy spear. The blow almost tore the man’s head from his body, and Edmund shortened his grip, pulled the weapon clear of the corpse and stepped forward so as not to impede the men in his file behind him.

Thirty routiers went down in a few seconds. Their ferocity was flayed by the crossbowmen-when they hesitated, the young, strong, and extremely well-armoured apprentices and journeymen of the Armourer’s Guild reaped them like ripe wheat.

The fight turned like a pinwheel, and a full minute had not yet passed.

But as most such fights do, the result rested on spirit. The routiers had no reason to stay, beyond loot and pride. The Band were protecting their homes and livelihoods. They held.

The routiers broke. They ran into the market-overturning tables and slaughtering anyone who stood near enough to be reached with a blade.

The Band-that part of it that had held together-gave chase.

The market became a scene from hell.

As the butchers-who had broken and now reformed-turned on their tormenters for revenge, the massacre began to spread down Cheaping Street in both directions.

Captain de Burgh was down. In fact, his life was gurgling out of him. There was no one to give orders.

The whole of the “Battle of Cheaping Street” lasted less than two minutes. But the massacre that followed went on for hours, as a mob of apprentices and militia began to hunt and kill every Galle-or anyone who looked to them like Galles. The rumour spread that the Galles had seized the Queen and that added a new fuel to the fighting.

By the time Holy Thursday dawned, five hundred Harndoners were dead and as many Galles, most of them servants, grooms, whores, and other relative innocents. Much of the dockside north of the Cheaping was on fire-the slums around the Angel Inn. Men said the Galles had set the fires to cover their retreat, and the Band-now out in force with their six surviving captains-stood guard while the guilds and the poor fought the fires. Sluice Alley was ditched across to make a fire brake.

The last fires didn’t go out until noon, at which point the whole city, Harndoner and Galle, subsided into surly exhaustion.

De Vrailly stood in an embrasure of the palace, looking out over the rising smoke by the river-smoke so thick it mostly obscured First Bridge and the areas across the river. Only the masts of the great Venike cogs-all of which had slipped their cables and re-anchored in midstream-could be seen above it.

“This is the Queen’s doing,” de Vrailly told the King.

The King nodded.

“Her partisans were primed for this rebellion.” De Vrailly shook his head. “I have lost good men-loyal men-to the canaille of this accursed town.” He was so angry he could barely speak. “I would like to strike back at these mutineers.”

De Rohan handed him a set of scrolls. “Your grace, these are orders for the arrests of the ring leaders,” he said. “They are exhausted-sated with their depravity. We can strike now, with our retainers and the Royal Guard.”

The King appeared confused. He had chosen to read the arrest documents. The scroll he’d opened bore the name Gerald Random.

“Ser Gerald is one of my most loyal knights,” the King said.

De Rohan shook his head vehemently. “Not at all, sire. He’s a renegade-a traitor in service to the Queen.”

The King made a face. “Rohan, you have the oddest notions. He is the master of the tournament. A Royal officer-”

“He was in the streets all night in armour, leading the town’s rabble of a militia against my men,” said de Vrailly.

“There is some mistake,” the King said. He crossed his arms. “I will not sign an arrest warrant for Ser Gerald Random.”

De Rohan looked at de Vrailly.

The King leaned out over the wall. “How many men do you have?” the King asked.

“All of Du Corse’s men and all of my own,” de Vrailly said. “And the Royal Guard,” he added quickly.

The King looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Almost three thousand men,” he said.

De Vrailly smiled grimly. “Yes, your grace.”

“And you plan to use them against the Trained Band of Harndon.” The King shook his head. “Made up of the best men of this city-the masters and journeymen.”

“We will destroy them,” de Vrailly said happily enough.

“You will destroy my city!” the King said suddenly. “You will behead the trades. You will leave me a burned-out shell.”

De Vrailly’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck. “I will expurgate treason!”

The King shook his head. “No, de Vrailly. You are creating treason. And you don’t have enough men, even with Du Corse, to take Harndon against the will of the whole population.”

De Rohan, misunderstanding, made a face. “We have hired every sell-sword and every mercenary in the city or passing nearby. We have all the soldiers.”

The King looked out over his city. He turned back to de Vrailly. “No. I will not have it.” He opened his mouth to say more-to speak his will.

De Rohan stepped boldly in front of de Vrailly. De Vrailly looked at him, appalled, but the King’s eyes were on de Rohan.

“Your grace’s feelings for your subjects do you credit,” he murmured. “But you squander your fine feelings on the very men who helped the Queen make you a figure of fun.”

The King paused. His colour rose-a sudden flush.

“We have tracked the woman who carried the Queen’s messages,” de Rohan said. “She went straight to the house of your armourer, Master Pye, from the Queen. Master Pye then summoned Ser Gerald Random.” De Rohan had it pat. It was his business-to know, and where he could not know, to create. “Men-good men-died to bring us this information.”

The King stood, balanced on some sort of edge. He was searching for something; his mouth moved. “If the Queen,” he said, hesitantly. “If the Queen was not…”

De Rohan spoke over him-an unheard of piece of lese-majeste. “But the Queen is an adulteress.”

The King swung on de Rohan. “That is not proven.”

De Vrailly was not pleased. His colour was high. He stepped away from de Rohan as if the man carried leprosy. Nonetheless, he said, “I will prove it on any man’s body,” he said. “We will give her a public trial. Trial by combat.”

The King looked at them both. He seemed, in that moment, to shrink. He turned his back on them. “You may not arrest Ser Gerald,” he said.

De Rohan-delighted by the idea of a trial by combat with de Vrailly as the accuser-stepped closer to the King. “We can invite him to the palace. With the other ring leaders.”

De Vrailly smiled mirthlessly.

“You will hear his treason from his own lips,” de Rohan said.

The King looked at both of them with weary distaste. “Everything was better before you came,” he managed. Then he looked at the ground.

“When we are done, we will leave your kingdom stronger, and your rule on surer ground,” de Vrailly said. “No king should have to be beholden to a rabble of fishmongers and labourers for his crown.”

De Rohan winced.

The King sighed. “Leave me,” he said.

“We shouldn’t go,” Master Pye said. “I know Ser Jean, and I know the King.”

Darkwood looked at Master Pye. “That’s close to treason.”

Master Pye looked bored. “I count the King as a friend. I ha’ known him since I fitted him for rings when he was going boar hunting-I don’t know. Thirty years? He’s a fine lance. The best, they say, in the west.” Master Pye leaned back-in full harness-and rested his lower back on the edge of his low chair. “He’s not so deft in counsel, and I speak no treason when I say he’s always had a tendency to do what the last loud voice bid him.”

“Which did us well eno’ when the Queen was the voice at his pillow,” Ailwin Darkwood said, fingering the massive chain of office he was wearing over his tightly fitted coat of plates.

“An’ now he’s being led by a pack of foreigners,” muttered Jasop Gross, alderman, under-sheriff, and Master Butcher. In despite of his name, he was thin and handsome for his fifty years. “Sweet Jesu, friends, we’re in a pickle.”

“There’s Jacks at work in the streets,” Ser Gerald said. “And where’s Tom Willoughby?”

“Where’s the Sheriff?” Master Gross asked. “They say he arrested the Queen and now he’s locked in with her.”

“I always said Tom Willoughby was a fool,” Ailwin Darkwood said. “And you gentlemen wouldn’t hear me.”

“I heard you,” said the only woman present. Anne Bates was the only woman in Alba to be head of a guild. She was the Master Silversmith for Harndon; she was an alderman. She was forty-five and iron-haired. The joints on her fingers were already heavy with arthritis, but her long nose and pointed chin and the perfection of the white linen of her wimple were more than just concessions to femininity. She raised her chin. “I heard you every time. He’s a fool. And now, instead of standing on custom, he’s arrested the Queen. Do you lot know where this Gold girl is?” She looked around. “The Galles want her badly.”

No one would meet her eye.

She snorted. “You’re keeping it secret? What a pack of fools. We hang together, friends, or we’ll all hang separately. I’m too old to plead my belly. Ser Gerald, what would you?”

Ser Gerald nodded. “I’d go. With Ailwin. And Master Pye.”

Pye shook his head. “My sense is that de Vrailly-or if he can’t stomach it, that oily rat de Rohan-will have our heads on spikes before we even see the King.”

Ser Gerald shook his head. “I can’t imagine the King-”

“He allowed his God-damned wife to be taken for adultery,” Master Pye said with emphasis that was reinforced by the fact that no man present had ever heard him use an oath before. “We’re nothing. Think on it, Gerald! Desiderata is in irons. That’s the power that de Vrailly and de Rohan wield.”

Anne Bates made a face. “I say it’s the new bishop.”

Pye shrugged. “Last fall-when they started coming after my yard-a Hoek merchant came to see me. He made threats. When he left, the Order had him followed. He went straight to de Rohan.” He looked around.

Random sat suddenly, as if his harness weighed too much. “What do we do?” he asked. “Turn Jack? Down with the King?”

Master Pye shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

Anne Bates looked at Ser Gerald. “I’ll go with you, Ser Gerald. A knight and a lady-hard cheese if the Galles are so dead to honour that they’ll put our heads on spikes after promising us a safe pass.”

Ser Gerald looked at the rest of them. “You say the King always goes with the last voice,” he said. “Let it be ours, then. I can shout pretty loud. Better than a Galle, I reckon.”

“You lose your temper, Gerald,” Master Pye said. “And if you do, you’re cooked. One word they can take as treason-remember that. In their eyes, the Queen’s a traitor. Anything you say about her is reversed for them.”

Random shrugged.

An hour later, having kissed his wife, he followed a dozen King’s Guardsmen into the mouth of Gold Square, which was lined with the richest men and women in the city.

Ser Gerald had no eyes for them. His eyes were on his escort of Royal Guardsmen. None of them wore the golden leopards on their shoulders-and three of them wore scarlet surcoats so ill fitting that they flapped in the breeze. The leader looked familiar.

He smiled at Ser Gerald.

Ser Gerald gave him a nervous smile back. He’d changed out of his harness and wore a fine black gown, proper attire for a man of his age, and good black hose; a chain, and his plaque belt and sword. “How long have you been in the Guard?” he asked the man.

The man was quite young. He shrugged. “Two days,” he allowed.

“You from Harndon?” Ser Gerald asked.

“No, ser knight,” the young guardsman said. “I’m from Hawkshead, west of Albinkirk.”

Ser Gerald stopped, struck by the coincidence. “I fought there last year, at Lissen Carak,” he said.

All three Guardsmen nodded. “We know,” said another, quietly.

“I’m not a rebel,” Ser Gerald said.

The leader of the Guardsmen spread his hands. He really looked familiar, but Ser Gerald couldn’t place him. “We know, Ser Gerald,” he said. “I have your safe conduct in my purse. We’ll take you to the King, and bring you back.” He looked around at the crowd of aldermen and senior masters who stood in Gold Square. “You have my word.”

His steady voice and the King’s livery did much to sway the crowd, and Ser Gerald walked up the hill-wearing a sword, and clearly not a prisoner. At the top of Cheapside, he met Anne Bates, wearing enough fur and gold to look like a duchess. He bowed, and she took his hand. Her escort was the same size as his own. All the Guardsmen seemed to know each other.

He kept trying to place the officer, who seemed very young for his role.

Nothing came to him as they walked through the quiet streets. Everything still reeked of smoke. All the bodies were gone, but there were buildings missing like rotted teeth in a beggar’s mouth, and people missing, too.

Random’s father-in-law, a past Master Stonemason, was dead, his head caved in by a poleaxe. So were many other men-and women-who counted for something in the squares of the city.

Past the scorched buildings and the scrubbed cobbles, he could see movements in the next street-Fleet Street. A heavy patrol of the Trained Band was moving parallel to the Royal Guard.

He couldn’t imagine Edmund and his mates attacking the Royal Guard, but their armoured presence made him feel calmer.

They went under the first portcullis of the outer ward, and left Edmund’s men behind.

The portcullis closed.

Even his Guardsmen looked startled.

Anne Bates, who was no kind of a flirt, clasped his hand.

Ser Gerald raised his chin, and walked on.

“Who’s the old woman pretending to be a lady?” de Rohan asked one of his men.

“No idea, my lord,” the man said.

“Find out,” de Rohan hissed.

No one came back to tell him, and the pair moved into the corridors of the palace.

De Rohan moved ahead of them, and arranged for the doors of the Royal Chamber to be closed.

He turned to de Vrailly. “The canaille sent Ser Gerald Random.”

De Vrailly looked at him with indifference. “So?” de Vrailly asked.

De Rohan forced himself to speak slowly. “I do not think Ser Gerald should be allowed to speak to the King.”

“Because in fact he is not guilty of treason?” de Vrailly snapped. “Because you are afraid of him?”

The word “afraid” was fraught with peril for a Galle. De Rohan flushed.

“It would be better if he did not reach the King,” de Rohan said.

De Vrailly shrugged. “Better for you, perhaps,” he said.

He motioned at the soldiers at the doors. The chamber was opened, and Ser Gerald Random and Mistress Anne Bates announced. They walked-fearlessly, or so they appeared-down the long silk carpet to the throne, where they bowed.

The King sat alone. Even the Queen’s throne had been removed.

“Ser Gerald,” the King said. He looked tired, and sad. “What is this I hear, that you bore arms against me today?”

Ser Gerald shook his head. “It’s not my place to disagree with your grace,” he said. “But I would never take up arms against my sovereign.”

“That’s what I told de Rohan. But he says…” the King said.

De Rohan stepped forward out of the ranks of courtiers. Most of the courtiers were nobles of the southern Albin-the men and women who lived in Harndon. But almost a third of the men present wore the tighter, brighter fashions that marked them as Galles.

“I say you are a traitor,” de Rohan said.

Random frowned. “It’s difficult for me to understand you, sir. Your accent is too thick.”

A few brave souls tittered. In fact, de Rohan had a scarcely noticeable accent unless he was flustered.

“Be silent!” de Rohan spat.

Ser Gerald bowed. “I cannot remain silent while you slander me, my lord. And I am here, I think, to speak, not to be silent.”

De Rohan pointed at Random. “He has coached the go-between-the girl who takes the notes to the Queen’s lovers.” De Rohan looked apologetically at the King. “I would rather say no more in public. It is too-disgraceful.”

Random shook his head. “What a foolish accusation. My lord, I do not even live in the palace.”

Mistress Anne curtsied. “Your grace, I beg leave to speak.”

The King waved a hand. “Please.”

“Your grace, I believe we were invited here to speak to your grace, and not to this foreign lord.” She managed half a smile. “Your grace, I’m a woman of business, not a courtier. If this were a business meeting, I would say that this man is trying to keep us from speaking our piece.”

The King looked at de Rohan. Then back at Mistress Anne.

“Speak, and be assured of my patience,” he said.

She curtsied again. “Your grace. The people of the city were attacked without provocation by the men-at-arms these Galles brought into our midst. Men and women of worth have been killed-”

“Men of worth?” de Rohan asked, his sneer palpable. “Some beggars?”

“My father-in-law,” Ser Gerald said.

“My nephew,” Mistress Anne said.

The silence was as palpable as the sneer had been.

“They looted and stole and raped, and when we called out the watch, they were beaten.” Mistress Anne paused. “And when we called for the Trained Band, they killed the captain.”

“Lies,” de Rohan said.

De Vrailly shrugged. “In Galle-” he began.

“You are not in Galle!” Mistress Anne snapped.

“No one was fighting against the King,” Ser Gerald said carefully. “We were protecting our homes. From thieves and murderers.”

“A fine tale of lies,” de Rohan said. “You and your rebels massacred our people. You killed our servants-unarmed boys and girls.”

The King looked at Ser Gerald.

He looked down. Then he looked up. “After they killed men of the Trained Band, we broke them. And we chased them, and as God is my judge, we were as bad as they.”

The King winced. “Damn,” he said. “Do you want a civil war, Random? Killing Galles in our streets-is that the rule of law?”

Stung, Ser Gerald stepped back. “Christ on the cross, your grace! They killed upwards of a hundred of your citizens. And in the eyes of many people, your grace, the Galles are coming to represent you.”

“Ah,” said de Rohan. He pointed at Ser Gerald. “Ah-now we see it.”

“Represent me how?” the King asked carefully.

“Your grace, you brought them here. You should send them away.” Ser Gerald set his foot and leaned on his cane. His missing foot was troubling him.

Very carefully, de Rohan said, “And what of the Queen?”

Ser Gerald drew a breath. He looked at Mistress Anne.

Mistress Anne curtsied again. “Your grace, we’re here to speak to you. Not this creature.”

The King exploded in impatience. “As God is my witness, woman! This man is not a ‘creature’ but a lord of Galle and one of my ministers and you will treat him with respect.”

Mistress Anne stepped back a pace.

De Rohan allowed himself a small smile. “What of the Queen, Master Random?”

Random looked at de Rohan. “Your grace, could you see to it that this Lord of Galle uses my proper title?”

De Rohan shrugged. “Merely an oversight, Ser.”

Random met his eye. “Ser Gerald.”

De Rohan shrugged. “As you say.”

“Get to the point!” spat the King.

“What of the Queen?” asked de Rohan for the third time. “How do the commons view the arrest of the Queen?”

Ser Gerald exchanged a look with Mistress Anne. “There’s not one man nor woman in the city that believes the Queen to be guilty of ought save love for your grace,” said Ser Gerald.

De Vrailly had remained silent until that moment. He was not in armour-a rare moment for him-but wore a mi-parti pourpoint; the left side was of purple and white brocade, and the right of yellow silk. He wore his sword, the sword of the King’s Champion; he was almost the only man in the hall to wear a weapon, besides the King and Ser Gerald.

“She is an adulteress and a witch and a murderer,” de Vrailly said. “I will prove it.”

“You will prove it?” Ser Random asked, somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of the charges.

“I have challenged for trial by combat. The so-called Queen murdered my cousin D’Eu, and I will kill her champion and prove her guilt.” De Vrailly glared at Ser Gerald. “Will you champion her cause, Ser Gerald?”

De Rohan was seen to smile.

Gerald Random had not risen to his current level without knowing when a negotiation had sprung a hidden trap. He counted to five-a tactic that had served him well in other negotiations. He ignored the panic that the trap, now revealed, caused in his throat.

If he declined, then he appeared to agree to the guilt of the Queen, and de Rohan could ask a series of questions about the riots and the support for the Queen in the streets that would quickly go awry.

If he agreed, he was a dead man.

“When, my lord, do you plan to try this case?” Random asked.

“In the lists, on the first day of the tournament,” the King said.

Random bowed. “If your grace will relieve me of the duties of Master of the Tourney,” he said. “And if your grace feels that a man with no right foot, no formal training at arms, and fifty years of age is the man to defend his wife in the lists-” Ser Gerald extended his wooden foot so all present could see it, and bowed over it-a move he’d practised many times with his wife, hoping for a happier occasion as Master of the Tourney. “If that is the case,” Ser Gerald said without a touch of the derision he might have used, “then I would be honoured to risk my life for her grace, who I see as blameless.”

Even de Vrailly caught the clear implication. For de Vrailly to fight Ser Gerald would make a laughing stock of the whole matter. And would be tantamount to the King declaring himself on the side of the accuser.

It was a calculated risk. And while the King’s face clouded over, and his temper boiled, Ser Gerald’s knees shivered, and he had trouble keeping his feet, or keeping the bland indifference that would be most hurtful to the King’s Galles on his face.

But Gerald Random had been scared many times. And he reminded himself that if he died in the lists defending the Queen, nothing about it would touch the horror of Lissen Carak and the things trying to eat him while he was alive.

He crossed himself.

De Rohan shrugged. “Of course, if you are afraid,” he said, but the words fell flat. Even de Vrailly looked at him as if he was some sort of worm.

Mistress Anne nodded. “And you have a licence? From the church?” she asked in a low voice.

The King’s face was bright red. “What licence do I need, sirrah?” His voice implied that she was a fool.

Mistress Anne curtsied. “Saving your grace’s pardon,” she said. “My husband is a clerk.”

The King looked at the Archbishop of Lorica.

He glanced at his secretary. The man writhed a moment. And then whispered in his master’s ear.

“This council is dismissed,” the archbishop said after a long look from the King.

Strong hands gripped Random’s arms. He didn’t struggle-he knew he’d failed. Even if they didn’t send him to fight for the Queen.

“Your grace!” he called. “These men are trying to bring down your kingdom!”

“Silence!” shouted de Rohan. “Your audience is at an end.”

“They lie, your grace!” Random shouted. He had a loud voice. “A fabric of lies. They have sent all your good men from court and now they ride you like a horse!”

By his left side, one of de Rohan’s men said to the guardsmen, “Take them somewhere they can enjoy his grace’s hospitality.”

“We are here under your grace’s safe conduct!” Random bellowed. But the King had left the chamber, and de Rohan stood by the throne.

“Enjoy the next few hours,” de Rohan said with an easy smile. “They are my gift to you.”

Hard hands dragged Random and Mistress Anne from the chamber, and down the first steps-past the laundry, and towards the dungeons.

The archbishop’s secretary was always on a tight schedule, and he left the palace late, wearing a plain brown robe like a mendicant friar, and went down into the town with two of his master’s guards.

Outside the gate was a large crowd of Harndoners.

“Master,” whined one of his guards. “We can’t go out in that. They’ll rip us apart.”

The learned doctor looked from one scared face to another. Since he knew-few better-what excesses these men were capable of, he was always surprised at the extremity of their cowardice.

Nor was Maître Gris without resources of his own. He puffed out his cheeks. “Very well,” he said. “You may bravely guard the palace. I’ll go have a cup of wine.” He shoved one of them in the chest.

The man, startled, backed up. “What the hell!”

“Now knock me down,” Maître Gris said. “And then go back inside.”

The man gave him a gap-toothed grin that lacked any pleasure-and hit him quite hard.

Maître Gris lay on the cobbles until the throbbing subsided, and picked himself up. An old woman-a crone, really-used her cane to help him up, and he blessed her automatically.

“God’s curse on them Galles,” she said.

Maître Gris joined the crowd. He moved with it for a while, gathering comments that his master might use, and then slipped away into the city.

The Angel Inn sat behind Sail Maker’s Lane in Waterside, just a few big buildings away from the Oar House. The inn was a fortress in miniature, with four linked buildings around a central court; balconied and walled in wood facing inward. In high summer, troops of players, minstrels, vagabonds, troubadours, mimes and acrobats would perform in the courtyard, and the inn, despite the unsavoury reputation of the neighborhood, had a fine reputation for food and for drink. Sailors and their officers frequented the place, and so did soldiers.

Maître Gris was the only monk. But he had nowhere to change into another disguise, nor were itinerant friars so very rare in taverns. He sat at a common table for a while, listening.

Buildings had been burned in the neighbourhood. The local men were outraged, and Maître Gris knew in half an hour that his life would be forfeit if they knew he was a Galle. He began to regret coming; their hatred was so inveterate that it sickened him, and he had to listen to an endless litany of hate.

He was a thoughtful man. He considered the hate that his master was brewing. The wine was terrible, the beer excellent.

“Are you by any chance looking to hire a scribe?” said a man.

He was tall, had grey-brown hair and wore a good green wool pourpoint and a brown and green cloak. He wore an elegant black wool hood trimmed in miniver and he threw it back as he sat.

He was not at all what Maître Gris had expected. He did not have missing teeth, nor scars, nor a squint.

“You are…?” Maître Gris began.

The man also wore a fine black-hilted baselard long enough to serve as a sword. “At liberty,” he said pleasantly.

With the Oar House so close, the Angel did not run to slatterns or whores, and the man who waited on them was short, pudgy, and might have been cheerful if he had not just lost his older brother to the Galles.

“Yer foreign,” he spat accusingly at the well-dressed newcomer.

“I am from the Empire,” said the man. He bowed.

“Not a fuckin’ Galle?” the boy said.

The newcomer’s pronunciation and accent could not be hidden. “No,” he said pleasantly. “I am from the Empire.”

The serving boy jutted his jaw. “Say somethin’ in Archaic.”

The man spread his hands. “Kyrie Eleison,” he said. “Christos Aneste.”

The boy made a face. “Right enough, I suppose. What can I fetch you, Master?”

“Dark ale,” said the man in the fur-trimmed hood. He looked across the table. When the potboy was gone, he said, “You are very brave, or very stupid. Or just desperate.”

Maître Gris frowned. “I understand that you are available,” he said.

The man in the black hood bowed his head in assent.

“My master,” Maître Gris said.

“The Archbishop of Lorica,” said the other man.

The friar rose. “I do not think…” he said.

The other man waved at him. “You want to hire an intelligencer,” he said. “Please-I only meant to offer you my bona fides. What kind of man would I be if I did not know who you were?”

Maître Gris regarded the man. “As a foreigner, you will not know any more than I know, here.” He leaned forward. “What is your name?”

The imperial shook his head. “Names will not help anyone here. In a few days-a week-given some money, I can have a network of informers who can supply almost anything.” He shrugged. “It is a craft, like any other. Some men work gold. I work people.”

The ale arrived. The imperial took a deep draught of his and smiled. “That’s a fine ale,” he said.

“You cannot expect me to hand you money and trust you to do your work,” Maître Gris said.

The other man gave a lopsided smile. “And yet, everything would proceed so much better if you did,” he said. “Mistrust is inefficient.”

Maître Gris shook his head. “I want information about Lady Rebecca Almspend,” he said. “She has disappeared.”

The man opposite him pursed his lips. “I have heard that name,” he admitted. “She was sent into voluntary exile, was she not?”

Maître Gris nodded. “Good, I’m glad you know of her. Find her, and we will talk about money and networks of informers.”

He rose. The other man took another sip of his ale and shook his head. “No,” he said.

“What, no?” the friar asked.

“I’m sorry, but I do not work for free. Ever. I’m quite well known, in my way. I do not work for employers who distrust me, and I do not work for free.” The other man shrugged. “I will not wander the city looking for a missing noblewoman. That would be very dangerous, just now. I work through others, and that costs money.”

Maître Gris was shocked. “And how do I know you would act properly?”

The other man shrugged. “How do you know that a servant will light your fires every morning? Or fetch a chalice when you want to say mass? You see, I assume that you are a cleric of some sort. What possible benefit would I accrue by taking your money and running?” He shrugged. “The sum isn’t big enough for me to steal,” he said.

“How much?” Maître Gris asked, sitting again.

The imperial allowed himself a very small smile. “Ten ducats a week for every informer I recruit and pay. A hundred ducats a week for me. If any other services are required, I have… friends… to whom they can be contracted.” He spread his hands. “They are efficient, trustworthy, and always clean up after themselves. They are very expensive, and yet many clients find that they are much cheaper than amateurs.”

Maître Gris shook his head. “I cannot agree to any of this.”

The other man finished his ale and rose. “I suspected as much. I will meet you one more time-that is all. I do not make multiple meetings. It is unhealthy. If you wish to reach me again, please leave a slip of parchment with no marking on it pinned with a tack to the water gate of the palace. Do this in the morning, and I will meet you-at this very table-that night.” He shrugged. “Or someone representing me will meet you.” He frowned. “You are foolish to be out in the streets and I, frankly, do not fancy being hanged beside you.”

Maître Gris rose again. “But-” he said.

The other man simply walked away. He paused by the innkeeper’s bar, and said a few words-the innkeeper growled at him, that much was visible.

The foreigner spread his hands, as if showing he was harmless. Then he sang something.

Nothing could have been more incongruous. He sang a short song in Archaic-his voice was beautiful. Some of the men in the tavern fell silent.

Then he went out.

The Angel being the Angel, and the man being so well-dressed-and foreign-a pair of men with clubs followed him into the dark alley.

He moved very quickly. They had to run to keep up with him, and when he turned into Sail Maker’s Lane, they were both breathing hard.

And he was gone.

Both men cursed and went back to the inn.

Jules Kronmir jumped lightly to the ground and shook his head before walking down the hill, towards Master Pye’s yard by a circuitous route that took him the better part of the evening.

Good Friday dawned in heavy rain and cold, as if spring was unwilling to come. The tournament was five days away, and there was a rumour in the streets of Harndon that the Prince of Occitan was a day’s ride away-indeed, that he’d halted at Bergon, the country town of North Jarsay, to spend the day on his knees.

The same rumour said that he had a hundred lances with him. And that he’d have more, but his army was fighting the Wild in the mountains. Without him.

“He’s comin’ for his sister,” people said.

The King’s Guard-or rather, the sell-swords and thugs making up the King’s Guard-were seen in the markets. With most of the citizens in church, they moved to take possession of the market squares and rally points, and no one stopped them. Families leaving church, tired and sad at the end of a day of the Passion, found Guardsmen and Galles at every street corner. There were a few incidents, but even the Galles seemed quiet in the face of the day of fasting, the end of Lent, and the violence of two days before.

Just before darkness fell, the King’s Champion rode through the streets with a hundred Gallish lances. There were Albans among them-local knights who’d seen which way the wind was blowing, and devoted King’s men. They marched a relief through the streets and changed the guards at each market square. Everywhere they went, they posted a proclamation.

It announced the Queen’s Trial by Combat on Tuesday next.

It attainted Ser Gerald Random for treason, and Mistress Anne Bates, and a woman called Blanche Gold, as well as Lady Rebecca Almspend and Ser Gareth Montroy, the Count of the Borders, along with Ser John Wishart, the Prior of the Order of Saint Thomas.

And it forbade all assembly by more than four persons of either sex, for any reason, or the public bearing of arms.

Master Pye sat in his private workroom with his lead journeymen. Duke had pulled a copy down from the market cross in the square where they had their Maypole.

“Probably a crime to take it down,” Sam Vintner said.

Master Pye glared. “No time for foolishness,” he said.

The journeymen sat and fretted.

“What do we do, Master?” Edmund asked.

Master Pye blew out his cheeks, took off his spectacles, rubbed them on his shirt, and put them back on his nose. He stared into the darkness of Friday evening.

“How did they do it so fast?” he asked the darkness.

Duke raised his head. “You…” and he paused.

They all looked at Duke. He was the only boy born in the streets. The others came from guild houses. Duke thought about things differently.

Duke shrugged.

Master Pye cleared his throat. “Favour us with your views, lad,” he said, and his voice was not unkind.

Duke shrugged again. “You take it all for granted,” he said. He sounded as if he was angry-or if he might weep. “It’s bloody good, this thing we have. But you forget it’s not natural. You expect everyone to cooperate with the law. To make the law work.” Duke took a deep breath. “But all you have to do is lie. If enough people lie, all the time, then there isn’t enough truth for law to work. That’s how I see it.” He looked at his feet. “If enough men are greedy, and willing to lie to get what they want?” He raised his head and faced them. “Then it’s easy. Their way is easy. And you lot will sit here and debate. When the only real answer is to arm, go out in the streets, and fucking kill every Guardsman and every Galle on every corner until we hold the city.”

Edmund drew in a breath in horror. He had had a bad week; the man he’d killed haunted him. It had been-so easy. Like fencing in the yard. But the real man had fallen like a carcass cut down by a butcher. But worse-bloodier…

“See?” Duke said. “You all still think that if you do nothing, maybe it will go away.”

“We fought!” Sam Vintner said.

Duke jutted out his jaw. “You know, I’m not a nice boy like you. My experience is-you always have to fight. Fighting is the normal way.”

Master Pye chewed his lip. “Duke, there’s merit in what you say. And mayhap we need a little more fire under us-by all the saints, people have been placid these few months. Wealth and good food and safety make men and women like cattle, right eno’.” He looked around at all his senior men. “But Duke-if we kill the Galles and the King’s men then we’re rebels.”

“That’s just a word,” said Duke.

“Not when the Galle knights come through our squares, killing our people,” Master Pye said.

“We need the Order,” Edmund said.

All the men there knew that the Order’s knights were somewhere. Ser Ricar no longer wore the black and pointed cross, and he’d been seen twice-once after he escorted the black man out of the city, and another time Edmund had seen him talking to a tall man in a fine black hood.

Master Pye surprised them by shaking his head. “We can’t count on the Order to do our fighting for us,” he said. “Duke’s right, and he’s wrong.” He chewed on his lips a little while. “I’m sending all o’ you north, to Albinkirk. It’s too late for the fair, but there’s an empty smithy there and Ser John Crayford offered it to us. You can’t stay here. You’ll fight-and die.” He shook his head. “It’s going to be awful.”

Duke glared. “Just run away?” he asked. “And what of all the orders for the tourney?”

Master Pye nodded. “I’ll be on the next attainder list,” he said. “And we don’t have the swords-not if every man in the whole City Muster stood against them. Three thousand Galles? Christ, boys, think on what the routiers was like.”

“We can fight,” Edmund said. He looked at Duke, who nodded.

“Can Ann fight? How about your sisters? Eh? Blanche? Want her to fight?” Master Pye shook his head. “Lads-either you are or you ain’t my people. You wear my livery, you eat my food. Now I’m giving an order. You pack the mint and all the armoury. And tomorrow, when I give you the word, you ride out into the city and over First Bridge.” He looked at Duke. “More than half the goods we’re working so hard to complete are for men now attainted as traitors.” He shrugged. “I’m not minded to complete the King’s harness, either.”

Edmund wanted to cry. “But-how? I mean-won’t they stop us?”

Master Pye shook his head. “You worry about moving four wagons over muddy roads. I’ll worry about getting you out of the city.” He waved them out in dismissal.

In the dungeons, the Queen sat in near perfect darkness. She had one window, high in the wall of her cell, and it allowed in some light during the day. She had a bed, and wall hangings and clean linen, and excellent food.

And very careful guards. She didn’t know any of them, despite their red surcoats. But they were cautious and courteous.

It might have been restful, except that de Rohan came every day to examine her. He brought a dozen monks and other creatures, and they filled her cell while he asked her, unblushing, to tell her the dates her courses had run, the names of her lovers, the date on which she had lost her virginity, and a thousand other little humiliations.

She ignored him, and eventually, each day, he went away.

It was easier to ignore him because she was, already and perpetually, under attack. His voice wasn’t even a pinprick compared to the assault of her real enemy, and the black serpent-that’s how she had begun to think of Ash, her foe-never ceased to press against the walls of her memory palace. There were no overt attacks.

Just a constant, deadly pressure on her mind.

He was insidious, too. Twice, defending the sanctity of her memory palace, Desiderata found false memories trying to leach through her walls. The memory of lying with Gaston D’Eu was laughable-her new enemy clearly had no notion of how a woman perceived the act of love. But the memory of giving Blanche a letter-a sealed letter-was almost tangible, and terrifyingly like a genuine memory.

And he gloated. That’s the reason she knew his name. Ash. So… fitting.

She began to grow scared. Desiderata was not easily made afraid, but here, in the constant darkness, with no sun and no friend, no Diota, no guardsman she could trust, without even a dog or a cat, she was oppressed by a power far beyond her own.

After a day of near defeat-by which time she had begun, like a mad person, to doubt her own thoughts-she turned to prayer. And not simple prayer, but sung prayer.

She sang. And while she sang, having practised this, she began to weave herself some protections, spending carefully some hoarded ops. She was shocked-almost shocked out of her palace-to find how little ops she had.

But she worked. She stayed on her knees for most of Good Friday, allowing the pale light of the rainy spring sun to fall on her face, replenishing what little power she could muster, making ops into potentia and then to praxis.

Singing hymns of praise to the Virgin, and all the while, holding back the night in the fortress of her mind.

The sun went down.

Why do you do this to me? she asked the blackness outside her memory palace.

The blackness made no answer. It was not even green-just black.

Slowly, she worked. And with her will along, she reinforced her hope. To Desiderata, the loss of hope would be the loss of everything.

But she had doubts, and they were like stealthy miners working under the walls of her fortress.

Why has the King deserted me?

Why does he believe them?

Why did he rape his sister?

Who is this man to whom I am married?

Did I ever know him at all?

Why is my palace built atop this evil thing?

The last question seemed to bear the weight of many meanings.

The guards changed outside her door. She heard the stamp of feet, the whisper of sandals, and knew that de Rohan was back with his minions. She kept her head bowed, her now-lank hair hanging over her face. She continued to sing-her six hundred and seventieth Ave Maria. As she completed it, she went straight into her favourite Benedictus.

And in her mind, she placed another small, carefully wrought brick of power in the growing citadel she was creating.

Her perception of the world was imprecise. She had very little awareness to spare for de Rohan, but she noted that he was alone, except for two guardsmen.

He began to speak.

She paid him no heed.

He went on, and on, hectoring, bullying.

She managed another brick. It glowed in soft gold, and she loved it, cherished it and the work she was doing, like fine embroidery done in potentia.

She felt his hand on her neck.

“Stand away from the Queen, my lord,” said the guard.

She was shocked-so shocked that in a single beat of her heart she almost let it all slide away. The pressure pushed in-she lost an outer room of her memory and Occitan and her childhood slipped away.

But she could hear.

“You may leave now,” de Rohan said. “I am safe enough with her. I am protected against her witchcraft.”

The guard did not move. “Orders,” he said. “Step away from the Queen, my lord.”

“I order you out,” de Rohan said. “There, nothing easier.”

His hand on her neck tightened slightly. His other hand at her head was possessive-and horrible.

She drove her elbow into his thigh and rolled onto the floor-simultaneously using all her power to fight the rising tide of attack in her head.

De Rohan was unprepared for her physical resistance and stumbled. The guard caught his elbow-and moved him across the room while he was off balance. “Stay away from the Queen’s person,” said the guard. He had almost no inflection in his voice. Just a man doing his job.

“I order you to let go of me and to leave me to this. Do you understand me?” de Rohan asked. “Do you know who I am?”

The guardsman rattled his spear against the bars on the door.

“Eh, Corporal. This gentleman is ordering me to leave the room,” he said.

De Rohan frowned.

The corporal addressed was in a long mail coat over a clean jack and his scarlet surcoat fitted well. “He cannot leave, my lord.” His accent was northern.

De Rohan smiled and tilted his head. “Very well, then,” he said. “I will leave, and I will inform the King that you obstructed my investigations.” He drew himself up. He was a big man-as big as his distant cousin de Vrailly.

The corporal nodded. “You’ll do what you think’s best, of course,” he said.

“He meant her harm,” the first guard said. “Had his hand on her throat.”

The corporal frowned.

“You’re a fool,” de Rohan said. He walked out of the cell and went quickly up the steps, past the guardroom and up into the palace.

“Not as big a fool as some,” muttered the corporal.

“What do we do if they come to kill her?” asked the guard.

“Grow wings and fly,” said the corporal, a little pettishly.

Desiderata heard the entire exchange. She was so deep in the defences of her mind that she wasn’t sure she had it right, but she shook off the looming shadows.

“You saved my life,” she breathed.

The guardsman was just leaving the cell. He smiled at her.

“We’re here for you, your grace,” he said.

It was almost as shocking as de Rohan’s touch. “Who sent you?” she asked.

The corporal made a sign. The guardsman gave a wry smile. He pointed at the walls and then at his ear.

“Best get back to praying, your grace,” he said.

De Rohan was beside himself with anger. He turned to his senior officer Ser Eustace De l’Isle d’Adam.

“Where are they?” he asked.

L’Isle d’Adam shook his head. “No one can tell me,” he said.

“Fetch the captain of the King’s Guard,” de Rohan snapped.

L’Isle d’Adam shook his head again. “Fitzroy is in the north, fighting the Wild,” he said.

“Who is the Lieutenant of the Guard?” de Rohan asked.

“Montjoy’s son, Ser Guiscard,” l’Isle d’Adam said slowly. “Of course, with the arrest of his father-”

“Bon Dieu! Do you mean to say that the officer in charge of the King’s household is Gareth Montjoy’s son?” De Rohan had never troubled to learn the intricacies of the court-he’d become master of it so quickly he hadn’t needed to.

“I fear so,” l’Isle d’Adam said.

“Ventre Saint Gris! You try me, l’Isle d’Adam! So that when I ordered that peasant Random and his trull to the dungeons…?”

“They never made it there,” said l’Isle d’Adam with some amusement. “Calm yourself, my lord.”

“Do you mean to tell me that he recruited all the new guards?” De Rohan put a hand to his chin. “Damn me. The two on duty in the dungeon-” He paused. “So the palace could be riddled with traitors.”

L’Isle d’Adam raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me, my lord, but I think that you are being too dramatic. He hired the sell-swords we sent him. Perhaps there are Queen’s men among them-a few.” He shrugged. “What of it? Two days past Easter, and we are done with all that.”

“Who commands the King’s Guard now?” de Rohan demanded. “Are there other officers?”

L’Isle d’Adam, in no way the other man’s social inferior, rolled his eyes. “How would I know? Do I look like a beef-eating Alban?” He shrugged. “Tell the King to appoint a new captain.”

“Fitzroy is his half-brother.” De Rohan shrugged.

“You got him to arrest his own wife,” l’Isle d’Adam said with some asperity.

“She is a witch and a murderess,” de Rohan said primly.

L’Isle d’Adam sneered. “Keep it for the commons,” he said. “Handsome piece like that-Christ, did you visit her alone?” He leered. “Did she ensorcel you? With her wiles?” He laughed coarsely.

De Rohan shook his head so hard spittle flew. “Leave me.”

The archbishop spent a bad night. Twice, crowds attacked his episcopal palace, and in the morning, six hundred men-at-arms had to march through the streets to rescue him. He went to the great cathedral and found it locked; he ordered it opened and found that every altar had been stripped and washed, and not a relic or chalice was to be seen.

In a fury, he went to the Royal Palace. After a stormy interview with the King, he said a private mass in the Royal Chapel-stung by the King’s assertion that in Alba, no mass was celebrated on Holy Saturday until the midnight of Easter. His mass was well-attended by some elements of court. Then he moved into new apartments, proclaiming that he could not trust his person in the streets.

Just after the bell rang for two o’clock, sentries on the wall called “Fire” and men ran to the walls to see.

The great episcopal palace was afire.

In an incredibly short time, the training and discipline of the Gallish knights was proven. Most of them were in full harness. Their war horses were saddled and ready, and they rode down into the town, a mighty armoured column. Even in the narrow streets of Waterside they were unstoppable, and no one tried.

The episcopal palace was surrounded by four wide streets. It sat alone above Cheapside, and now it burned, and threatened no other building. The knights dispersed a crowd by killing some looters and anyone else caught loitering near the fire, but their very violence discouraged any who might have helped them fight it.

So, like soldiers the world over, they sat on their horses and watched it burn, and made jokes about sending for sausages.

The whole situation might have been comic, but just before darkness fully descended, three of the squires at the end of the long line of armoured men saw a pretty young girl look winsomely around a corner. They followed her on horseback. The knights laughed to watch them go.

It was ten minutes before their knight found them-all three lying face up, with heavy arrows in their faces or throats. All had had their throats slit for good measure.

More was slit than just their throats.

The Galles exploded in rage.

Harndoners began to die.

An hour later, the archbishop sent Maître Gris to pin a scrap of parchment to the water gate.

Edmund, the journeyman, led six badly loaded wagons out of the city. They passed the gate at First Bridge, where two bored sell-swords in royal livery passed them with nothing more than a wink. On the wagons, or mounted on twenty horses and ponies, were the whole of Master Pye’s establishment; his best anvils, and his treasure. As well as half the pretty young maids of Southend-Edmund’s sisters and his Ann and both her parents. They were hardly alone. The road across the bridge was thick with people, all dressed as if for pilgrimage and carrying a few treasures, water bottles and food.

After a long and very loud fight with his wife, Master Pye had eschewed martyrdom and rode with them.

The only one of their people missing was Blanche. Ann said that she had gone to the Queen. Edmund thought her very brave, but he had other concerns. Like the guards at the gates.

The Royal Guards seemed to take no notice of them. They allowed thousands of people out through the gates, and then, an hour later, an officer came with horses, and they rode away with him, leaving the gates unguarded.

Easter Sunday dawned. Lord Mayor Ailwin Darkwood’s head adorned the great gate of the palace. Alongside it hung a dozen others of less repute, supporters of the city and the Queen-Diota’s head was there, as well, a warning to all the Queen’s loyal people.

Curiously, as his name was first on the execution list, Ser Gerald Random’s head was nowhere to be seen.

The archbishop, architect of the executions, celebrated high mass in the cathedral. His people had to supply every vessel and every vestment. The cannons had emptied the cathedral on Holy Saturday, and in the chaos of the burning of the episcopal palace, all of the riches of Saint Thomas had vanished. But whole neighbourhoods had burned. Some blamed the Jacks, others the Galles.

When he emerged from the first mass of Easter the sun was brilliant in the sky above him. It shone on the blood in the streets, and on the armour of the Occitan men-at-arms who were making camp beyond Southgate. Occitans and Galles had little to say to each other at the best of times. By noon there was a rumour that there had been a fight in the streets behind Southgate.

Suddenly, the streets were full of Galles and Royal Guardsmen. As on Good Friday, every square was occupied, and every tower manned.

The same sun shone like a torch through the high window of the Queen’s cell. It was the first direct sunlight, clear and golden, to touch her skin in four days. It was like a lover’s kiss-like a moment of salvation.

Her hair hung like the mane of a wild horse. She hadn’t changed her garments in three days, afraid that she might be attacked while changing-afraid that any complex physical activity would distract her from the fight in her head.

She had not eaten in two days, and the child within her protested by kicking and kicking. Her sides hurt-her back burned like fire. The new milk in her full breasts soaked against her shift and smelled. Her swollen breasts hurt her-too sensitive, too full. The weight of her belly was like that of a sinner’s chains in hell.

But the sun-the sun’s touch-was pure. And the guardsmen had preserved her hope, even if she did not understand why. And then on Saturday night, in the utter dark, Blanche had come-a girl she’d seldom noticed. Blanche had combed out her hair, and prayed with her.

Guardsmen had let her in, and then let her out.

On Easter morning, the oldest guard put a tray of bread and cheese on the floor and made a point of eating a nibble of each.

“No need to starve yourself, your grace,” he said. “Your brother’s on his way. And we won’t let anything happen to you.”

He seemed disappointed when she didn’t respond, but the pressure did not become less with the advent of the day. If Easter had any magic, it was only in her heart. She dared not pause to eat.

She could only drink in the golden light like a newborn suckling at the breast. Food, her brother, her failure of a husband…

That was all for another world.

In the darkness of last night, she had worked out what it wanted.

It wanted her baby.

She could feel it now, looking to enter into her, and through her, her son.

She drank the golden light. Her world was reduced, in four straight days, to this-resistance.

Working swiftly, she embroidered the new rays of ops into refined potentia and built the resulting material into her wall.

Her body was far away. She loved it, but there was little she could do for it.

She wanted to weep for the pain that hunger and deprivation were causing her baby.

She could smell the cheese. She wanted a moment to eat and drink the clean, cool water.

She did none of these things. Instead, she drank the pure golden light and waited.

And prayed.

On Easter eve, Prince Raymond of Occitan sent a herald to the King of Alba.

The King met the herald in the great chamber. It was hung with garlands-a veteran of the Alban court would have found them thin. The Queen was in prison; her ladies were all exiled, and the female servants of the palace had, in a body, stayed at home. Rumours of rape and assault by the Galles on the maids were rife; no girl wanted to admit to being attacked but mothers, angry or in mourning from the violence in the city, kept their girls home, and in many cases their boys as well.

The King’s eyes wandered over the flowers-too few-and the ribbons, which were sparse and, in at least one case, dirty.

Jean de Vrailly stood by the throne. He, too, saw the frayed and dirty ribbon.

“Your grace, if I may, should never have put himself in a position to be so embarrassed by common people.” He walked across the near-empty hall and pulled down the offending ribbon.

The King had his chin in his hand. He was not well-dressed-in fact, clean against the spirit of the day, he wore black. “What?” he asked.

“In Galle these things are better ordered,” de Vrailly said. “And the lower people would never dare this sullen revolt.”

The King stretched his feet out. “You mean, stay at home. On a feast day.”

De Vrailly looked at the King. “What ill-humour is this, your grace?”

At the far end of the hall, Royal Guards in brilliant scarlet escorted a tall young man whose honey-blond hair and elegant features might have been irkish. Indeed, many troubadours claimed irk blood flowed among the people of Occitan. They spoke a different form of Gallish, and they sang songs from Iberia and Ifriquy’a as well as from Alba and Galle. In the coastal towns, there were even mosques, tolerated by the princes. Occitan was a land of song, and oranges.

And very skilled knights.

The herald wore the full costume of his trade-a tabard of golden silk checked in azure, with the imperial eagle spreading his mighty wings over all, worked in silk couching so accurately that it looked like a real predator ready to leap-very much at odds with the Alban and Gallish heraldry of formalized, ritual beasts and heads.

The herald moved with the grace of a dancer. He was as tall as de Rohan or de Vrailly, and he bowed deeply before the King, his right knee firmly on the floor. His hose were silk-the best hose in the room.

De Rohan entered from the King’s rooms, late, flustered, and moving quickly. Behind him came a dozen well-dressed men in silk and wool and fur, adding to the lustre about the King. A full half of them were Albans. The events of Holy Week had polarized opinion throughout the Brogat, Jarsay and the Albin, and many men-King’s men-had swallowed their dislike of the Galles in the face of violence. Every action by the re-born Jacks in the countryside recruited yeomen and knights for the King-and de Rohan.

De Rohan’s latecomers took a moment to settle, and were joined by a dozen priests and monks and the Archbishop of Lorica, also late.

The herald waited patiently, his face expressionless. His eyes never shifted from the King’s.

The King nodded to the herald.

He raised his staff. “Your grace, my lords and ladies of Alba, the Prince of Occitan sends his greetings,” he said. “My lord has come to settle any issue of accusation between the King of Alba and his wife, my sister, the Lady of Occitan.”

De Rohan did not even wait for the King to reply. “This is a matter affecting only the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Alba, and is, we regret-”

The herald quite clearly ignored him. He had a rich voice-he almost sung his words. “Upon arrival in this land, my master has had neither greeting nor guesting from his cousin the King of Alba. And upon approach, he has received threats-”

De Rohan opened his mouth and the King of Alba made a sudden movement. Even de Rohan had to be silent in the face of the King’s direct order.

“-and now discovers that the Queen of Alba, his sister, has been accused of witchcraft, of murder, of treason and of adultery,” the man’s beautiful voice went on. “Which accusations, my master finds abhorrent, and the more so as they are to be tried by combat, a barbaric practice antithetical to the teachings of the Holy Church-”

The archbishop shouted. His voice was a trifle high-he was young. “Absurd! Who is this boasting coxcomb to tell me what the Holy Church-”

Maître Gris leaned over to say something in his ear.

“Shut up!” he told his secretary, still too loud and too shrill.

“-but a convenient fiction to cover a crime,” the herald finished. He neither smiled nor frowned.

“You dare?” de Rohan said.

“My master demands the immediate release of the Queen into his custody. He is not interested in honeyed words and delay. Give him the Queen his sister tonight.”

“These are not the words of negotiation,” the King said wearily.

The herald took a glove from his belt. “If my master’s most reasonable demand is not satisfied,” he said. “This glove will guide his next action.”

“Are you threatening war?” de Vrailly asked. “You cannot be serious.”

“We will not release the Queen, who is a criminal and a witch,” de Rohan said. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

The King looked at de Rohan and rose to his feet. “Master Herald, I need a moment to confer with my officers of state. Please be kind enough to-to wait.”

The herald bowed.

At the King’s rising, everyone had bowed. Now they formed a corridor, and he walked down it, from his throne’s dais, off to the right, and through the great oak doors to his tower and the royal apartments.

The archbishop caught de Vrailly’s arm. “You must stay here and watch this so-called herald.”

De Vrailly looked at the archbishop. “You think…?”

The archbishop frowned. “I merely guess that he, too, is a sorcerer. Watch him.”

The archbishop hurried away, leaving de Vrailly poised in a rare moment of indecision. But he did not think that the King faced any threat from his cousin, and he had just been threatened with war by the King of Occitan. A thought that made him smile with something like glee.

He turned, his armour clacking softly, and went to stand in front of the throne, his sword drawn.

In the King’s inner council chamber, the King sat at the head of the table, flanked by the archbishop, as chancellor, and de Rohan, as first privy council. Next at the table sat Du Corse, now Marshal of Alba, and across from him, l’Isle d’Adam, second privy council.

De Rohan began talking before the King was seated. He was excited.

“Your grace, my lords, we have a golden opportunity here if only we can grasp it.” He smiled at the King. “The Occitans are neighbours-and foreigners. We can unite the support of the people who matter to us-the knights and the gentry-to fight them. Their coast is rich. The campaign will pay for itself.”

Du Corse was cautious. “We have very little time,” he said. “And for myself, I have heard that the men of Occitan know how to wield a lance, and I have never trusted armchair generals who tell me wars will be over by midsummer.”

The King raised his head. “Why do we have very little time?” he asked.

Du Corse froze. It was perceptible. Then he shrugged. “Your grace must know that our Kingdom of Galle is also threatened by the Wild,” he said.

The King’s eyes went to those of the archbishop. “You maintain, I think, that the Wild is a fable,” he said. “A snare of the enemy.”

Du Corse looked away.

De Rohan frowned. “We must discuss what answer to make to this coxcomb.” He nodded to the archbishop. “I like the word.”

The King sat back, and scratched his beard. “No. I want to hear the archbishop tell me his views on the Wild. In light of there being an attack in Galle.”

“Fleeing men report ten where there is only one,” the archbishop said. “It is all exaggeration and fable.”

Du Corse frowned.

The King looked around as if for wine. He shrugged. “But Monsieur Du Corse will take his lances home to fight it,” he said slowly. “What is your departure date, Du Corse?”

Du Corse too obviously looked at de Rohan.

When the King had moments like this, the Galles were used to de Vrailly smoothing things over with his absolute certainty. The archbishop regretted leaving him behind-but only until he saw de Rohan pour wine at the sideboard, and then he knew he’d guessed correctly.

“That date is of little moment compared to the presence of a foreign army on our doorstep,” de Rohan said, setting the King’s golden cup at his elbow. It was small personal services like this that had won the King’s esteem when de Rohan was only de Vrailly’s standard bearer. The King, despite the vector of the conversation, smiled warmly at de Rohan.

The King liked to like people. But he shook his head. “It is not an army. One of my guardsmen says it is fewer than three hundred knights, no archers, and no spearmen. They came for the tournament, gentles.”

De Rohan grinned. He couldn’t help himself. “Better and better,” he said.

The King looked down the table, took a long draught of wine, and then shrugged. “I don’t see where you want to go with this, de Rohan.”

The first privy council smiled. “Only three hundred knights?” he said. “It could be the shortest war in history.”

At that, the King’s head snapped around.

But de Rohan was only just warming to his idea. “A complete victory-it will take the wind out of the sails of the Queen’s supporters, it will deflate the commons and show our power and unite the gentles against the foreigner.” He raised his eyebrows at Du Corse. “And pay the routiers in loot.”

Du Corse frowned.

But anything he might have said was interrupted by the King, who shot to his feet. “That’s it, then,” he said. His open palm slapped the table so loudly that the archbishop jumped. “I have had time to think of many things, gentlemen. And it occurs to me-I have begun to think-that you-do not…”

Suddenly he slumped. His knees relaxed, and he went down into his chair. Only the immediate presence of de Rohan and two large servants kept the King from falling to the floor.

“A surfeit of wine,” de Rohan said with a soft smile. “You heard him, my friends. ‘That’s it.’ He agreed.”

Du Corse narrowed his eyes. “That’s how it is going to be, is it?” he asked.

De Rohan pursed his lips and wiped his hands fastidiously on the King’s cloth napkin. “On Tuesday, de Vrailly will kill the Queen’s champion. We’ll burn her as a witch, and the rest will follow easily enough.”

L’Isle d’Adam shook his head. “He’ll never stomach it.” He looked at de Rohan. “Grande Dieu, de Rohan, I do not think I can stomach it.”

“You do not think she is guilty?” de Rohan asked.

L’Isle d’Adam shook his head. “I do not think there’s a man present who could stomach burning the Queen.”

“She’s a heretic-a temptress-a seducer and a murderer,” the archbishop spat.

“As I said, I do not think there is a man present who could stomach it,” l’Isle d’Adam said. “May I suggest-very strongly, Monsieur de Rohan-that the Queen suffer an accident after her trial by combat?”

“Perhaps trying to escape?” Du Corse said. “For the love of God, de Rohan-we don’t have ice water in our veins like you. And the commons…”

De Rohan snapped his fingers. “That, for them,” he said.

Du Corse nodded very slightly. “What a fine time you will have ruling this fair country when I take my lances back to the King.”

De Rohan turned to the two big servants. “Take him to bed,” he said.

They bowed.

“Do you have any news of our army in the north?” de Rohan asked.

Du Corse sighed. “Army is far too strong a word. Ser Hartmut has a fine siege train and about a hundred lances-and some sailors.”

“Too far away to be any use,” de Rohan said.

Du Corse looked at l’Isle d’Adam and shrugged again. “Monsieur d’Abblemont had a plan for the union of our forces,” he admitted. “And he was intending to reinforce the so-called Black Knight with two hundred more lances this spring.” He looked at de Rohan, his face wrinkling with suppressed displeasure. “But I suspect the troops were never sent. The King and council in Lutrece are adamant about the summer campaign. The reports from Arelat are very serious.”

“Shall we go back and inform the herald of the King’s decision?” de Rohan asked. He seemed uninterested in the events in Arelat.

“What do you perceive was the King’s decision?” Du Corse asked.

“Why, war, of course!” de Rohan said. “In the morning, at dawn, the King asks that you attack their camp.”

Du Corse nodded again, very slightly. “We are very chivalrous, are we not?” he asked.

By the time the first market carts rolled into the squares of Cheapside on Easter Monday, the boys who spread news knew there had been a battle.

Most of the Royal Guard, and all the lances that the Conte Du Corse had brought from Galle, rode through the town before first light. They passed without challenge through Southgate.

They formed, four deep, across the front of the Occitan camp, where sleepy sentries watched.

One of the sentries blew his horn.

The “Alban” army charged the camp.

It should have been a massacre. The Galles were in full harness, and so were the men of the Royal Guard. Most of the Occitan knights, stumbling from their decorative pavilions, should have been unarmed and unprepared.

They were not. They were fully armed, cap-à-pied.

There were also surprisingly few of them-only a hundred or so, led by a knight in the blue and gold chequey of the royal house. There were no squires and no pages.

The Occitans gathered together in the tight wedge and charged the “Alban Army” that outnumbered it ten to one.

The fighting was brutal. And very skilled. The Galles suffered because their horses were not yet recovered from the sea voyage. The Occitan horses were superb.

But no knight can triumph at odds of ten to one.

Du Corse eventually unhorsed the blue and gold knight, after they had gone lance to lance and sword to sword. And finally, dagger to dagger. Du Corse got his arm in front of the other man’s neck and his dagger pommel past his head, hooked him and threw him to the ground.

Even then, the blue and gold knight would not relent. He found a sword on the ground and fought back-even as a dozen Gallish and Alban knights cut at him. He killed a horse, dismounting an Alban midlands knight named Ser Gilles. He cut the Conte Du Corse’s reins.

He was like a madman, and the other Occitan knights were as bad. Each one seemed to require a siege. The sun rose, and they were still fighting. The surviving Occitans drew into a ring in the middle of their camp-about twenty of them. They were surrounded by tent stakes and ropes and fallen tents, and the Galles and Albans had to dismount to face them. The blue and gold knight was still on his feet, although blood was seeping through some of the joints in his harness.

Du Corse, bleeding from a smart thrust to the inside of his left elbow, sent them a herald.

He came back. “They call us all cowards and caitiffs. They say there is no parley with evil.”

“Christ, what fools,” muttered Du Corse. “Bring up crossbowmen and shoot them down, then.”

Forty feet away, de Vrailly led a fourth charge at the tight circle of Occitan knights. Again, as in his first three attacks, he put one down with a great blow of his poleaxe-his almost inhuman speed at the moment of contact, his size and his deceptively long reach made him lethal. His axe slammed, almost unimpeded, into an Occitan knight’s faceplate-the visor crumpled backwards, destroying the man’s face.

But the circle closed, and the Occitans were too well-trained to lose another man. De Vrailly took a blow and then another, and had to stumble back, baulked of his prey-the Occitan banner.

De Vrailly saw the red-and-blue liveried crossbowmen moving at the edge of his vision, limited as it was by his own visor. He gritted his teeth and turned and clanked back to where Du Corse sat on a fresh horse.

“You cannot do this,” he said.

Du Corse spat. “I can, my lord, and I will. I need lose no more knights.”

“We are the better men.” De Vrailly was enraged. “By God, ser knights, do you doubt this?”

Du Corse shook his head. “Not in the least, my good de Vrailly. But in this case-these men are like assassins. They have drunk wine or taken opium or something like it. They intend to fight to the death. I see no reason to give them any more of my knights.”

De Vrailly looked up at the new marshal. “I was against this surprise attack. And look, Marshal. It was no surprise. The Occitan prince was warned, and he has slipped away-leaving a handful of very brave men to die.”

“A foolish choice.” Du Corse was resentful. He might have said, amateurish.

De Vrailly spat. “As God is my witness, my lord, you have erred grievously in this. And the Prince of Occitan left these men to lure us to shame. Shame! I say, he left a few good knights to prove that we were base. And par Dieu, monsieur, so we have proved ourselves to be.”

“The Occitan prince’s cause has been found wanting on the field of battle,” Du Corse said. “That is all.”

“Let me take my squires,” de Vrailly pleaded. “Let me fight them. Man to man. One to one. Until we have killed or taken them. We will-Deus Veult. I know it.”

Du Corse motioned at the captain of his crossbowmen. “Monsieur de Vrailly, you may have a very different fight tomorrow.” He nodded. “We cannot have you exhausted for the Queen’s trial.” He pointed at de Vrailly’s foot. “You are wounded. I insist you retire.”

The crossbowmen were just thirty yards from the tight circle of Occitan knights. The Occitans saw them, but at first refused to believe it.

As the crossbowmen-most of them Albans-spanned their heavy arbalests, the Occitans called insults.

Clear in the cool spring air, one accented jibe carried to Du Corse. “These are the Gallish knights of whom our fathers told us?”

One of the Occitans had a wine cup from somewhere. He held it aloft, his visor up, and he laughed and drank.

The Occitans began to sing. They were big men, but men who trained in singing as well as in fighting, and their voices rose in a polyphony.

De Vrailly’s face darkened and grew mottled with rage. Occitan and Gallish were different enough in pronunciation-but the words were clear enough.

The crossbowmen leaned their spanned weapons on the tops of their great pavises to steady them.

“No!” bellowed de Vrailly.

“You can send your squires to fight the survivors, if you insist,” Du Corse said. He turned in his saddle. “Loose!”

Desiderata was very far gone when the woman came.

She was scarcely able to distinguish between the real and the aethereal anymore. At first she thought the woman was Blanche, come to help her. Reality and the aethereal had all but merged to her sight, and she had begun to overlay the aethereal version of the world on the real, so that the shadows were darker where the thing called Ash seemed to pool, and the bright green coils that some other power was laying, hideously, about her and what bloomed inside her showed stark against the walls of her cell.

But despite the crisis in her sanity-and her outward attempts to repel her enemies, if they were not creations of her mind-she was also aware that it was Easter-the greatest festival of the Christian year. And the moment of rebirth in all the old ways. The moment when young spring killed old winter.

In between her prayers to the Virgin-a ceaseless litany-she thought of her springs. Of her riding out in spring with fifty knights to make the May come in. Of the fecund earth, and the dances. The green of the grass.

It was with these two thoughts in her head-the green of the leaves of spring and the Virgin-that she first saw the woman come through the door of her cell.

The closed door.

She did not shine. In the aethereal, she appeared solid, and in the real, she appeared insubstantial. There was no outward sign of power about her-a tall, grave woman who wore a simple kirtle of rich brown.

But as Desiderata looked at the brown, she thought it was perhaps a foreign textile, some wonderous silk of Morea or farther afield. The brown was itself made up of a thousand tiny patterns-there, of flowers, a riot of colour covering whole fields, if only for a few days, and then another portion with a border of birds so cunningly wrought that they appeared to move and sing, and another, a lady on horseback, riding with a hawk on her wrist…

The lady had a dignified face. The face of mature wisdom, and fecund strength. Motherhood and virginity, or perhaps something older and better than mere virginity-a serenity of strength.

Desiderata was on her knees, and her mouth was already saying the Ave Maria.

She raised her hands to the woman.

Who smiled.

“Oh, my child,” she said sadly. “Would that I might tell you they know not what they do.”

Her voice was low and clear, vibrant with energy. Just to hear her made Desiderata straighten her back.

The woman bent, a hand on Desiderata’s head and another on her back.

All of Desiderata’s pains fell away, leaving her only the ache of knowing how near to term her pregnancy was.

The pools of black became palpable, and manifested.

“Tar, you hypocrite!” said the dark voice.

“Ash, you try me.” The woman moved a hand.

“You interfere as freely as I do,” Ash said.

The woman interposed herself between Desiderata and the pool of darkness. “No,” she said. “I obey the ancient law, and you break it.”

Ash laughed, and nothing about the laugh was like a laugh save the outward sound. “The law is for the weak, and I am strong.”

The woman raised her arms. “I, too, am strong. But I obey the law. If you flout it, it will punish you. Stronger immortals than you-”

“Spare me your mythology,” Ash said. “I will have the child. Now you have interfered directly, breaking the compact. Now you are as much a law-breaker as I.”

“Spare me your immaturity. I did not strike the first blow, or the tenth. And you know-you must know-how tangled has become this skein.” She brought her arms together.

“So tangled that only I can follow it. Come, entangle yourself, and I will destroy you, too.” Ash’s voice grew in strength.

“Can you?” Tar asked.

“Enough that I know that this one will die by your hand.” Ash’s laughter was like the cries of souls in torment. “And the child either will never be born, or will be mine from birth, by the actions of your people.”

Even as he spoke, he grew, and as he grew, his assault on Desiderata’s mind became more intense, until it was like a barrage of trebuchets.

Had she not prepared…

But she had. Her golden wall of power accepted blow after blow.

The woman spoke again, even though by now she was surrounded by darkness.

“If you continue to waste your strength on mortals, you will in time teach them to fight you. Look-even now, this daughter of mine has built a wall you cannot easily breach. What if she teaches it to others?” She sighed. “Are you so sure that you can survive what is to come?”

“Survive?” Ash asked. “I will triumph.”

The blackness filled the room.

His power in the real was something against which Desiderata had no defence, and she was losing the will to breathe.

The woman was no longer visible. Desiderata had time to wonder what she was hearing-whether this apparent conversation between Satan and the Virgin was occurring in the real or in the aethereal. Or somewhere else.

Or just inside her head.

One of the golden bricks in her wall of solitude shifted. The shift was minute, but terrifying.

Ash chuckled, like blood running over a stone.

“You were a fool, woman, for coming to my place of power.” Satan’s voice was strong and level.

“Really?” the woman asked. “My power thrives equally in light and darkness.” She seemed to sigh. “Does yours?”

The progress of time outside in the room was glacial. Seas rose and fell. Lands shifted-mountains grew and then stone cracked and they eroded away. Erosion changed the shape of worlds hanging in the infinite universe of hermetical spheres.

Or so it seemed to Desiderata.

And then something in the cell was different.

The air smelled of decay. And mould.

But also of new life.

“Many things grow in the darkness,” the Virgin said. “And you cannot stop them.”

The choking blackness gave way to a thicker darkness and a wider range of smells. Earth. Old basements. A wine cellar and the wine. Old cheese.

“You!” Ash said.

“Of course,” the other voice said. “Many beautiful things grow in the darkness. But I am not restricted by the darkness, and you have made an error.”

Suddenly, light flooded the room.

The floor of the room was gone-the cold stones, the hole in the corner, the recess where plates were left.

All gone.

The floor was a hand’s breadth deep in rich loam. And now, in between beats of Desiderata’s rapidly beating heart, something sprouted in the soil, and strands of green-not the virulent green of the Wild, but the natural green of the wilderness-leapt from the rich soil and began to grow. It grew straight into the pools of darkness, piercing the darkness the way the light could not. Even as the green spikes grew, they developed barbs.

The Virgin allowed herself to sink onto a bench that had appeared.

The sound of a choir began-

A shriek began-

And both were buried under the voices of a hundred thousand angels-or perhaps faeries. The briars leapt to the ceiling, which was now a luminous gold. The briars gave forth blossoms, a profusion of them so rich as to beggar thought, and they burst into flower-red and white and pink roses, and the smell of roses swept the cell like a cleansing tonic and routed the darkness like an avenging army.

And then every blossom began to move-the petals began to fall and the legions of faery angels seized on each falling petal and carried them to the figure of the woman seated in the middle of the rose garden.

Desiderata sighed. For the first time in as long as she could remember, the black assault on her wall had ceased. “Oh, Blessed Virgin! You have saved me,” Desiderata said.

The woman turned slightly, and raised a corner of the wimple that hid her face. “This is not victory, my child,” she said. “Nor is this even the turning point. I have only restored equilibrium.”

“Liar!” shouted Ash. “Hypocrite!”

But he was very far away.

The first day of the tournament-the day of the Queen’s trial by combat-dawned grey and foggy.

The guards found the Queen asleep in her cell-a cell, they said, that had become a rose garden overnight. Many men-hard men-fell to their knees as the Queen emerged from the cell. She was dressed in a plain brown gown, and her pregnancy was so pronounced as to make her ungainly-yet she was not. She was calm, and beautiful.

They put her in a wagon. They did so with surpassing gentleness.

She was taken through the streets of the city, and she could see how few people there were. She knew nothing of what had passed, but she could guess much from the burned buildings and the silence.

But what men and women there were bent their knees as her cart passed. And many, many men, and not a few women, buttoned their hoods against the unseasonable cold and damp and followed the cart out to the tourney grounds.

The gates of the city were open and, outside the city, the lists and the stands and all the pavilions for a great tournament were prepared.

And mostly empty. Thousands had left the city.

They took her from the wagon and set her on a chair-not in the stands, the formal stands, to be above the lists, but at eye level with the men who would fight.

Only then, quite late in the proceedings, did she fully understand. Her understanding came from seeing the pole of iron, with a huge pile of wood already piled about it.

She did not avert her eyes. She looked at it.

She turned to one of the men guarding her. “Is that for me?” she asked. Her voice sounded deeper than she had expected.

“Your grace, I…” He swallowed.

“It is, if my champion fails,” she insisted.

Her guard nodded.

“Is my brother here?” she asked calmly.

Her guard would not meet her eye. “No,” he admitted.

In the middle-distance, emerging from the fog of early morning, she could see a great column of richly clad nobles and ladies approaching. At its head she saw the King, attired in his usual red. He appeared listless, puffy-eyed and absent as he approached.

By him was Jean de Vrailly, in armour, cap-à-pied. And around him were half a hundred other Galles, all fully armoured, even de Rohan. There was no shortage either of Alban nobles, men and women. Many of the Alban knights wore harness, too.

The King was directed by a sergeant-at-arms to the pavilion where he would await the events, but he rode past the gesticulating man, and his horse’s hooves rang on the ground as he approached like a bell tolling her doom.

But his face was working like an infant in the moment that the pain hits, just as it opens its mouth to cry.

One of the Galles-de Rohan-tried to take the King’s reins. “You must not speak to her,” de Rohan insisted. “She is a criminal and a heretic.”

The King jerked his reins expertly from the other man’s grasp, and just for a moment the Queen was reminded of who he truly was-or had been. The best knight.

The Queen rose, made a curtsey. “A boon, your grace!” she called. Again, her voice was as clear as a perfect spring day.

He nodded. He closed his eyes-as if he had to concentrate to hear her.

It came to her that he was drugged. Or crazed.

“Save our son,” she said.

The archbishop laughed mockingly. “Save your bastard?” He shook his head. “You-”

The King raised a hand for silence.

But the archbishop leaned down from his horse. “Shut her up,” he said. “Your bastard goes to the fire with you.”

“This is your God of mercy, my lord?” Desiderata asked, her voice gentle. “To kill the child with the mother? The innocent child? The heir of Alba?”

“God will know his own,” the archbishop spat.

The King was having trouble remaining mounted. A pair of guardsmen came and supported him. He tried to speak, but de Rohan waved, and the men-at-arms led his horse towards the Royal Pavilion.

De Rohan lingered. “Count your remaining breaths,” he said. He smiled.

Desiderata felt liberated. She’d seldom been so calm-so strong. “You enjoy making hell come to earth, do you not?”

De Rohan’s smile, if anything, grew. “It is all shit,” he said. “Don’t blame me for it.” He breathed on his vambrace and polished it on his white surcoat.

She met his smile with one of her own. “It must be terrible,” she said with the clarity of the edge of death. “To be both selfish and impotent. How I pity you.” She reached out a hand-not in anger, but in sorrow.

He flinched. “Don’t touch me, witch!”

She sighed. “I could heal you, if you gave me the time.”

“There’s nothing to heal!” he spat. “I see through the lies to the truth. It is all shit.”

“And yet from your shit grow roses,” she said. “Burn me, and see what grows.”

Now he backed his horse away. “No one will save you,” he said.

She smiled. Her smile was steady and strong, and utterly belied the fatigue graven into her face. “I am already saved,” she said.