The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Five

The Albin

Amicia spent their first day on the road reassuring herself and her sisters that she was not leading them to temptation, or even humiliation and death. Riding with the Red Knight and his household-who were, however she might wish to describe them, sell-swords and mercenaries and not knights errant-terrified her two companions.

Sister Mary was a tall, quiet girl with a brilliant mind and a straight back and a fine voice, both in the aethereal and in the real. She was young to be travelling, just seventeen, and her day-to-day struggles with the temptations of the world were palpable-sometimes amusing, and sometimes terrible. She was pretty, and afflicted with a need to be seen as pretty that conflicted with her quiet, and very genuine, piety. She was a poor rider, a peasant born, and she suffered from the youthful urge to refuse help. Her straight blond hair and ice-blue eyes were widely admired among the captain’s men.

Sister Katherine was warmer, with curly red hair and a vicious sense of humor. She was the oldest of the three, a mature thirty, and she had born and lost a child as a young woman. She was noble born-and had worked away the pride of her birth on stone floors and a hundred forms of penance and laundry.

It hadn’t been entirely successful.

In truth, both women had been handed to Sister Amicia as supports, but also as projects. Sister Katherine had a reputation for arrogance, and Sister Mary for wantonness.

It was, Sister Amicia thought, as if Sister Miriam was challenging her.

Despite which, the three had gotten off to a fine start. Healing knights and clearing boglins and hearing confessions had all been adventures, and the three had shared enough adventures in their first weeks together to create a bond that gossip and the stresses of castle or convent life might never have allowed. When Sister Mary paused by a pane of glass to look at her reflection, Amicia made no comment, and Sister Katherine’s rosary of coral and gold drew no comment either.

The first day on the road had been difficult enough. Sister Mary usually walked or rode a donkey, but the column bound for the tournament was moving too fast for her, and she was mounted on one of the company’s spare horses, and suffered cruelly from the first halt on. As a trained physiker and a hermeticist, she had an arsenal of cures she could deploy, but as a young woman, she bit her lip and endured and muttered darkly until Sister Amicia put a hand on her to steady her, and pushed ops into her thighs.

“Am I so obvious?” Sister Mary asked.

Amicia laughed. “Yes,” she said.

Sister Katherine, on the other hand, was in her element-she was on a fine eastern mare, and she rode better than some of the soldiers.

“Tonight, if you’ll allow it, I’ll split my kirtle and ride astride,” Sister Katherine said. “I can do yours and Mary’s, too.”

Sister Amicia sighed. Katherine was always at the edge of the allowed, looking for a way outside. “I’m not sure the world is ready for nuns who ride astride,” Amicia said.

“By our lady, Sister-you say mass, they threaten you with heresy, and you are worried by riding astride?” Sister Katherine pouted.

The Red Knight, fully armed and wearing a scarlet surcoat of silk, shot with gold thread, trotted down the column with Toby, his squire, and Nell, his valet, at his golden-spurred heels. He was making his way down the column slowly-inspecting it. The three women had lots of warning.

The rain was sporadic. “Once your skirts are soaked, the thighs will hurt all the more,” Katherine said. “And astride will be easier on Mary. This is no way to ride.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. They were entering the great gorge of the Albin River.

Immediately behind the three nuns was the escort of Thrakian knights led by Ser Christos. He was smiling broadly when Amicia looked back. He had water dripping down his grey-black beard and he bowed his head. He called something in Archaic and his knights and stradiotes straightened up. A servant handed a linen rag forward, and all of them began wiping each other’s metal dry.

A watery sun emerged from the clouds as they turned east, climbed a low ridge, and suddenly the world seemed to drop away before them. Around them, the Brogat rolled away in a series of hilly landscapes-to the west, the hills rose towards mountains currently hidden in rain. But the hillsides were already lush and green in early April, as if to belie the last days of Lent.

But to the east, the great river rolled in its deepest gorge before emerging into the plains of the Albin. The gorges of the great river were spectacular, and thousands of years of spring run-offs as strong or stronger than this year’s had carved a mighty channel through the low hills of the central Brogat. Far below them on their left, the river charged along, muddy and green-brown with ice-cold snow melt and old leaves and new-swept loam all rolling along at the speed of a cavalry charge. The river was, in fact, so loud, and the walls of the great gorge echoed the river so well, that conversation was difficult.

It stunned the senses-the drop was two hundred feet and more to the channel below and the mad rush of the water and the wet grey rock and the white birches and the green of the leaves. Amicia found she had to remind herself to breathe, and when she turned her head from the drop, he was there.

He was smiling happily. He took a deep breath himself, looking out over the canyon and the river, and then he met her eyes. His smile didn’t change. Before she could stop him, he took her bridle hand, kissed it, and passed her.

The path along the gorge was too narrow for Amicia to turn her horse easily, and she’d only bring chaos to the column. She rode on, turning in her saddle to look. But he was pointing out something on Sister Mary’s saddle to his valet, and the young woman slid from her saddle and took Mary’s horse’s head.

He caught her eye again. His smile returned. He simply pointed and moved his hand-one of the company’s signals that she knew from the siege. Move.

She saw no reason to disobey, so she turned to face forward, to the immense relief of her mount. They began to pick their way along the most spectacular view she had ever seen.

Under foot, birch and beech leaves sodden with rain made a brown-gold contrast to the green leaves above, and even as she raised her head from her noon prayers, the sun, brightening, kissed her with its warmth and she rode easily, thanking God from her very soul for the perfection of the day and the beauty of the view.

They rode along the gorge for three magnificent miles, and then the trail re-crested the ridge to their right and went a little west and down slope, leaving the roar of the water far enough east that normal conversation could commence.

There was an old wagon circle, well used and with twenty big firepots recently cleared at the base of the ridge, where a fine stream hurried to meet the great river to the east. A pair of stradiotes was there with most of the squires and valets. The wagons were already parked, and the captain’s pavilion was already up.

It was only just after noon. But Amicia put a hand in the small of her back and was glad to stop. She found the captain’s squire giving orders and approached on horseback.

“Eh, Sister?” he asked. “Cap’n says to offer you and your sisters a cup o’ wine while the tents go up.” He waved to the pavilion, where Nell was pouring wine for what appeared to be a large party. Two long tables had been constructed, and places set for twenty.

Amicia considered refusing, but one look at Sister Mary eliminated all thoughts of rebellion. She had chosen to travel with him, and she was going to have to see him every day.

The column had become quite strung out in the gorge. It took an hour for the last part of the rearguard to come up-more of Ser Christos and his stradiotes.

Sister Mary was already asleep in her folding chair. Sister Katherine went to make sure they had a tent of their own.

Amicia sipped her wine. After a little while, Ser Thomas Lachlan came and sat by her.

“Where are the herds?” she asked.

Ser Thomas laughed. “On the west road,” he said. “Only the Red Knight would lead his party through the fewkin’ gorge.” He smiled. “There’s a perfectly good road, just one more valley over west, like.”

“Why the gorge, then?” Amicia asked.

Ser Thomas laughed. “You, I reckon,” he said. “He’s mad for ye-you know it, aye?”

Amicia found that despite her best intentions, she was blushing furiously.

He grinned at her. “I’m fer thinkin’ you’re not so agin’ it as you seem.”

Amicia drank a little more wine than she’d intended and coughed.

“Ah, well.” Ser Thomas nodded. “I’m an old busybody.” He leaned back, all six foot four of him. “Did ye like the gorge, lass?”

Amicia nodded. “I loved it. The rush of the water-the depth of the gorge. Magnificent.”

Ser Thomas made room for Ser Gavin and Ser Michael as they entered. They bowed to her and talked in whispers because of the sleeping Sister Mary-all except Ser Thomas Lachlan, who didn’t seem to have a whisper.

Outside the pavilion, a cultured voice laden with sarcasm asked, “What’s our lord and master doing now? Finding minstrels to play for his lady love?”

She heard Toby say something softly.

The cultured voice said, “Oh, my God.”

Chris Foliak, still in his arming clothes, stepped into the pavilion out of the spring evening. He was beet red, and when he saw how red Amicia was, he turned even redder.

Amicia got to her feet. “I think-” she began unsteadily.

Ser Thomas rose. “Don’t go, lass. It’s just Foliak’s usual way of goin’ about things-lead wi’ his tongue. Eh, Kit?”

“Good sister, I apologize for my-” Even Chris Foliak wasn’t sure what to say.

But luckily for everyone, Sister Mary chose that moment to moan, and awake.

“Oh-Amicia!” she said weakly.

Amicia took her by the hand and led her to their tent. There were only a hundred people in the whole party, and fifteen wagons-so their tent was not so hard to find. By it, Sister Katherine was leading a dozen young men and women in prayer. She flashed Sister Amicia a smile.

Sister Mary was so tired from riding that it was all she could do to get undressed to her shift. Amicia laid her down, covered her and watched her fall asleep unaided by any hermetical wisdom.

Katherine rose from her knees, coral prie-dieu in hand, and dusted herself off. “Blessed Virgin, Mary is going to hate horses tomorrow morning,” she said. “This household has no chaplain since Father Arnaud died.”

Amicia nodded.

“Well-you have a licence to say mass, Sister. I don’t.” Sister Katherine grinned. “Father Arnaud said mass every morning, I gather. They’re not all impious rake-hells like their captain.”

Amicia nodded, not sure whether she should defend the captain or join the attack. “You know I’m on this journey because my licence has been declared heretical,” she said.

Sister Katherine nodded towards the large red pavilion. “I gather there’s wine?” She smiled. “Listen, I’m related to half these men. I won’t err or fall on my back for one, but I’d like to spend a week riding and talking about something other than laundry.”

Amicia might have scolded her, but instead she laughed, too. “We can watch each other,” she said.

The pavilion fell silent as the two nuns entered.

“Par Dieu, gentles,” Ser Pierre said. “We’ll have to watch our oaths and our manners.”

“Good practice for a tourney before the King and Queen,” Ser Michael said.

On the last line, the captain came in. Amicia noted that he smelled of sweat-male and horse-and of something metallic. As he entered, Nell appeared and put a cup of wine in his hand. Other men rose-not all together. No one bowed, but the deference was there. When he sat, they all sat.

He smiled at Amicia. “No need for guests to pay me so much courtesy,” he said.

She returned his smile. “No one was ever hurt by too much courtesy.” Other people had gone back to their conversations and she had his attention. “Would you like me to say mass for your people, while we are on the road?” she asked.

He looked around. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I would. If you’re declared a heretic, will we all go straight to hell?”

She shook her head. “No, I imagine all the sin will fall on my shoulders.”

He nodded. “Excellent, then. Any time you’d like to take on some more sin…” He paused. “No, that was asinine.”

“Yes,” she said, frankly. “I tell you what-you pass on all forms of double-entendre and I’ll forbear easy religious comments about your life of violence.”

He nodded. “Done. I’m not that good at double-entendre anyway.”

He looked around. “Gentles,” he said, and they were quiet. His easy exercise of power disturbed her. He did it too easily. He didn’t wait for them to finish what they were saying, as Sister Miriam might have, or join another conversation and wait his turn. He paused, and they reacted.

He made a motion to Toby, and all the squires and pages left the tent.

“As I entered, Ser Michael mentioned that we would need our best behaviour to be at court with the King and Queen.” He looked around. “What I have to say does not leave this table. It is not meant for the pages and squires, nor is it for the peasants who sell us food.”

Now he had their attention.

“The King has arrested the Queen on charges of witchcraft. She is accused of murdering the Count D’Eu by sorcery.” His voice was bland-he might have been discussing the weather.

Ser Michael turned pale. “Christ on the cross,” he said. “Is he insane?”

The Red Knight shook his head. “Friends, I have been too slow. I should have recognized-never mind. But I no longer know what we’re riding to-war or peace, a tournament or a darker contest.” He looked around. “I think most of you have some idea where Ser Gelfred is. So you’ll understand that we have news.”

Ser Alcaeus smiled knowingly. Bad Tom shrugged.

The Red Knight leaned back and sipped his wine. “As we get closer to Harndon, we’ll get better and more accurate reports. But if what I have today is accurate, and what Ser John Crayford had two days ago tallies with it, the Prince of Occitan is riding into southern Alba.”

“And there’s raids all along the frontiers,” Bad Tom said.

“Master Smythe said: go to the tournament.” The Red Knight shrugged. “Every bone in my body tells me to sit tight in Albinkirk and raise an army, but mayhap-with a great deal of luck-mayhap we can save something.” He shrugged. “Any road, we’ll be cautious, and move as if in a land at war.”

The men all groaned.

Ser Michael shook his head. “I don’t like it. Is the King… possessed?”

Since it was treason to propose such a thing, a certain hush fell.

Ser Gabriel leaned back and looked into his wine cup. “I thought I knew what was going on. The arrest of the Queen…” He shrugged. But Amicia noted that he merely sipped his wine. She had seen him drink more heavily. He was very carefully controlled.

Ser Michael looked over at Ser Thomas. “Send for the company,” he suggested. His suggestion was stated in fairly imperious tones.

Ser Thomas wrinkled his nose.

Ser Gabriel managed a thin-lipped smile. “I’m tempted. But-if we take an army into the Albin, then we’re the ones doing the provoking-and to all the people, all the merchants and yeomen and farmers, it will always seem that we provoked the King. The rightful King.” He looked around-at Ser Christos and Ser Alcaeus. “We have a good force-enough knights to defeat any casual attempt to take us. And we have friends.”

“And where exactly is Master Kronmir?” Ser Michael asked.

“Exactly where we need him to be, of course,” Ser Gabriel said, with something of his old arrogance.

Two days of intermittent rain turned the roads to a froth of mud and leaves. The gorge road that ran along the ridge top had good rock under all the mud, and the wagons continued to move well enough. Twice, Amicia rode along a path so narrow that she looked down to the left and wished she had not, and once, she and Sister Mary, who was feeling a little more human, had to dismount and put their backs against a cart to keep it from taking a wagoner and two mules into the gorge. The second time they got covered in mud, they had to accept dry clothes from the pages.

Sister Katherine laughed. “I could wear hose and a jupon every day,” she said. “If it weren’t so infernally difficult to pee.”

Nell smiled. “You get used to it,” she said.

Sister Mary looked at Amicia, with her hair under a man’s hood, and Katherine, with her curly red hair badly captured by an arming cap. “We will all be burned as heretics,” she predicted.

Waking among the captain’s household was as different from waking in the nunnery at Lissen Carak as could be imagined. It started with animals-the whole company was mounted, and a hundred men and women had three hundred animals-mules, horses, two pairs of oxen, a cow for milk; a pack of dogs led by a pair of mastiffs who belonged to Bad Tom but never seemed to be with him, and some cats who lived on the wagons, and the captain’s falcons and Ser Michael’s and a few terrified chickens. Morning came suddenly and almost violently, as the sun roused the animals to a chewing, barking, calling, biting, farting, neighing clamour.

Sister Katherine slept through it effortlessly. Sister Mary complained that she was getting no sleep at all.

“And all the men are looking at me. All the time.” Sister Mary shuddered.

Sister Amicia forbore to comment and sat up. In the convent, they all went to careful lengths, as hospitallers, to be perfectly clean. They also dressed carefully so that as little flesh as possible showed at any given step. The Order had long experience of various passions and a very realistic view of what might happen to large communities of young men-or women-all working together.

The life of a military camp made most of these practices impossible. Men and women had to dress outside their tents, unless they wished to take so long that the captain’s master of household might order the tent taken down around them, which had almost happened to Mary on their first morning on the road. Nicomedes was a Morean-tall, very thin, a scholar. And a hermeticist of some small talent, as Amicia quickly discovered. But he was the captain’s major-domo, and he made sure that tents went up and down, fires were started and quenched, and food was cooked on time. He and Miss Sukey-Mag’s daughter-ran almost every aspect of camp life, and if they ever quarrelled, Amicia never saw it.

So, on a damp morning with rain threatening, Amicia had to force herself out of her warm blankets-roll them tight against further damp, and put them in a sleeve of waxed linen to go behind her saddle-and then leave the tent in the light rain in her sleeping shift, which was also her second shift and bid fair to be her only shift if she tore out the shoulder in the better one.

From there, though, her convent training stood her in good stead. No matter how many pages and squires made time to watch her dress, she could get into her man’s shirt and hose under the shift without showing her knees, much less anything more exotic. The boyish clothes didn’t please her-the wool hose were prickly against her legs and the loose gowns of the Order offered a certain freedom-but the men’s clothes were much easier on horseback. She and Katherine were dressed in heartbeats, and set about folding, brushing, and tying everything in their small camp. Katherine, by far the better horsewoman, went to fetch their mounts.

Nell came early with her boy. He was handsome, large-eyed and hard-muscled with something of the feral ferocity of all young men, but an edge of gentleness and care for Nell that Amicia liked. He held out three wooden bowls with sausage and eggs and two-day-old bread, toasted and buttered.

Amicia went into the tent where Mary was dressing carefully. “Don’t forget to eat,” she said.

That night, their fourth on the road, they had camped at a beautiful wagon circle right at the edge of a great bluff that looked south over the magnificent green and gold quilt of the well-farmed Albin highlands. She had found a little arbour a few paces to the west of the wagon circle, and she led her little congregation there, still munching her sausage, and as the sun swelled-red-gold and still threatening more rain from the east-she said mass with Mary as her only server from plain wooden dishes and the captain’s silver cup. Ser Michael was there and Ser Christos and also a dozen drovers, ridden over from their own camp to the west, where the vast beef herds lowed like lost souls and the sheep baaa’d on and on, punctuating her sung benedictus and making her laugh-they all laughed as the sheep sounded so much like a choir of animals.

She was surprised to see Ser Christos-the Morean church had even firmer rules about mass than the Alban church, when it came to women. But it was a nice congregation, and she enjoyed it immensely.

Marcus, the Etruscan knight’s squire, and Toby, the captain’s, both came and gave her courtly bows. The archers all waved. Cully, the leader, and Cuddy, his boon companion, and Flarch, a dangerous man and a lecher, all paused to pay their respects.

“What’s a handsome piece like you doing in a place like this, Sister?” Flarch asked with a leer.

“The work of God,” Amicia said. “A pity it can’t be said of all of us.”

“That’s you told,” Cuddy hissed as the three archers walked off to their horses.

Through the trees, the captain’s trumpeter polished his trumpet with a cloth. Everyone knew that was the last thing he did before blowing it, and Nicholas Ganfroy was no longer so young, or so poor at playing the trumpet. The company had other new recruits to haze.

Amicia emerged from the trees to find that Katherine had her horse saddled and in hand. Cupped in her own hand was the last shred of consecrated host, which she gave to Katherine with a blessing.

Katherine bowed, chewed, swallowed, and sung a prayer.

Nicholas Ganfroy, who now knew his business, looked them all over carefully before putting his trumpet to his lips. He blew the first note, and every page and groom led his charges-all the horses in his lance-to their places on the parade. The knights, men-at-arms, fighting pages and the handful of archers walked steadily out to their places in front of the line of horse holders.

Even while the company formed, there were already half a dozen outriders watching for them. Stavros’s cousin Mikal, now a sort of under-officer, led two files of Thrakian light horsemen along the parallel ridges, linking up with Ser Thomas’s Hillman scouts to the west.

Amicia, who enjoyed seeing things done well, enjoyed it all.

The captain came across the field even as Nicomedes and a dozen servants dropped his pavilion-the first tent up and the last tent down. He strolled across the parade ground and stopped at Ser Michael’s lance to look at the new archer, Nell’s friend.

The boy blushed. He stammered something.

The captain laughed and put a hand on his shoulder, and Ser Michael made a note on a wax tablet.

Then he walked straight across the soldiers to where all the women and non-combatants waited with their horses. There were not as many as usual. Sukey, Mag’s daughter, now led the contingent. She’d ridden in-alone-a day before with no explanation on why she was late to the column. A year or two ago, Amicia would have assumed that all of the camp women were whores-and ministered to them anyway. But even four days on the road showed that they were the company’s reserve of expert labour-they sewed. They seemed to sew from morning to night, when they weren’t doing laundry, tending to the injured, or helping the pages with the horses. They also-mostly-had their own tents.

Amicia was a woman. Women’s lives interested her more than men’s.

The company had a great many women-in the ranks, and out of them.

Amicia assumed that the captain was coming to address Sukey on some matter of march discipline, but instead, after a bow to his head-woman, he walked up to the nuns. He smiled.

She smiled back.

“I think you have my cup, good Sister,” he said.

She knew she blushed. But she held her smile. “It is the best in the camp,” she said.

“I really don’t mind loaning it to God,” he said. “But He’s got to give it back.”

Sister Mary’s harshly indrawn breath clashed with Sister Katherine’s chuckle.

She handed him the cup. He raised it as if in a toast. “Just give it to Toby tomorrow,” he said. Then he paused. “May I show you something beautiful this morning? Come ride with me.”

If she had been prepared, Amicia would have found it easier to refuse. She didn’t intend to be alone with him-then, or ever again.

But he was smiling…

She found that she had taken her rouncy from Sister Katherine-who gave her a lopsided smile-and walked over to join the captain, Toby, and the trumpeter.

Ganfroy raised his trumpet to his lips a second time, and the call to mount rang out.

The captain vaulted into his saddle while people cheered. Toby met her eye and shrugged.

“He’s a terrible show-off,” she said, loudly enough to be heard.

Ser Gabriel laughed. “I am, at that,” he admitted.

Forty paces away, Nicomedes swung onto a tall wagon next to Sukey, who raised her riding whip and waved it.

Ser Gabriel waved to Ser Michael, who walked his horse over to them.

“The good sister and I are taking a little ride,” the captain said.

Ser Michael nodded to Amicia. “You have a long spoon, Sister?” he asked.

She laughed and was surprised at how she sounded-a little wild. She clamped down.

Ser Michael took the staff of command from Ser Gabriel and held it aloft. He waved it at the Moreans-their ranks moved, anticipating the trumpet.

Then the trumpet crashed out, one more time, and the whole company rolled into motion.

“It’s more like the convent than I would have believed,” she said.

Down the column, each file moved smoothly into place except the last-Ser Michael’s. Robin rode well, but the new archer was mooning and he was late moving forward. His horse caught his inattention and jumped-Sukey, in the lead wagon, had to rein in after her animals had done the work of getting the heavy wagon rolling.

“You useless sack of pig-shit. Someone tied your balls in a knot last night and now you can’t find ’em?” Sukey’s voice was mild-it was too early for anyone to manage real invective.

The boy flushed with anger and then swallowed it, and got his horse into the column. He was a poor rider.

“Just like the convent,” Ser Gabriel said.

“Are you kidding?” Amicia laughed. “Miriam can manage all that in one half-raised eyebrow.”

“Perhaps I could send her all my file-leaders.” He wasn’t paying her any attention at all. He was focused on his column.

During the siege, this had fascinated her. She had had her share of swains as a lass-and by and large, they mooned. Gabriel had his own ways of mooning, but he seldom took his attention off his work to do it and, as a woman, she preferred his focus to the puppy-dog behaviour of younger men.

Side by side they rode. The day was clearing from its early dampness to a good blue-and-white-skied April day.

“Any chance of fish for Friday?” she asked.

He looked at her.

She shrugged. “I’m easy in my conscience about a little dried sausage when breaking the fast of the night. But Friday is Good Friday and many of your people will not want to eat meat.”

He nodded. “I think you’ll find Nicomedes already has this on his plate-as it were.” He nodded. “Fish are hard to come by until the Albin runs down to the salt. There’s plenty of them there, but no one to fish for them, I think, except farm boys skipping out on work.”

They rode east, towards the river, while the column rolled west.

“It may be that we’ll all fast, on Friday,” he said.

“Even you?” she asked. The river was getting louder as they climbed towards the height of the stony ridge.

“I am coming to terms with some of my views on God,” he said. “New evidence has presented itself.”

“You’re going to let God off the hook, are you?” she asked, and even she was surprised at the acid tone she used.

“Perhaps,” he said.

Then the wall of sound cut off any possibility of conversation.

Almost immediately, the trail went to the right, and down, winding and winding.

Very quickly, Amicia was reminded of how important sound was to balance and perception. The white noise of the water-out of sight, but obliterating all other sound-made her feel almost blind.

After some time, Gabriel dismounted and helped her dismount-without any display. Then he led his horse down the trail, which was narrower and softer, so that their horses and even their boots left tracks. A mist hung over the trees.

They seemed to walk in a world of their own. They didn’t attempt to communicate, except that once he intruded into her memory palace to say, “It is very soft here-be careful,” and she smiled and thanked him.

And then they emerged from the trees onto a broad, flat greensward. There were whole trees on the grass, washed up to show that at the full peak of the spring flood, the grass was awash. Nor was it a perfect lawn-legions of ducks and geese had ensured the future fertility of the spot.

The noise was still incredible.

He walked to the water’s edge. A broad pool, the size of a small lake, rolled away into the fast flow of the river beyond. The banks were green, the water ice-cold and ocean deep. Out in the middle of the pool, a trout rose, red and gold and silver, the size of a big cat, took a fly neatly and rolled back under the cold black water.

But the pool didn’t hold the gaze. The falls were the miracle. The falls fell three hundred feet from the bluff far above where they had camped. They fell in a single broad sheet, separated high above them by a spire that stuck straight up into the air like the tower of a small cathedral.

Her eye could not stop tracking the water as it fell and fell and fell-the pool devoured it and sent it away down the river.

Amicia fell to her knees and prayed. She prayed for herself, and for him, and for the place and to bless God for all of creation.

When she rose-her knees thoroughly damp-he had tied the horses. He beckoned to her, and she followed him willingly enough. She felt at ease. Confident. Happy.

He led her to the edge of the falls, so that the enormous rush of water was passing a hand-span from his face.

Then he stepped into the water.

Amicia had seen a waterfall before, if not one so mighty as this. She stepped into the waterfall, too. In fact, she was merely damp when she emerged into the cave behind the fall.

The cave was not silent, but the sound was merely noise here.

He was grinning. “You do trust me.”

She shrugged. “I might say that I trust in God, and provoke you,” she said. “But in truth, yes, my dear, I do trust you.”

“Well, I thank you for your trust. I wanted you to come here.” He shrugged. “I found it years ago. I always imagined bringing my lady love here.”

She laughed. “Sadly-perhaps sadly for us both-I am a nun, and not your lady love.”

He nodded. He fetched a stool-there were several. “I can build a fire to get you dry,” he said.

She shrugged. “I’ll get wet again going out,” she said. “Nor would it be useful for me to strip for you.”

“This place is very special,” he said. He ignored her last comment. “Can you feel it, oh puissant Sister?”

She reached out into the aethereal.

She put her hand to her mouth.

“It is closed off. The earth on one side and the rush of flowing water on the other.” He nodded. “I imagine something very powerful could make it in, or out, but this cave is virtually sealed in the aethereal.” He sat on a stool and leaned back. “So here we can talk. About anything. No one is listening-not Harmodius, not Thorn, and not even Ash.”

The name reverberated.

“Ash?” she asked.

“After Lissen Carak, I went and made an ally-I think-of a potent and ancient Power that men call the Wyrm of Ercch.” He glanced at her and she nodded.

“I have learned a great deal talking to him. Mostly, I have learned that he opposes another Power, who he calls Ash, and who-” Gabriel smiled like a boy. “I know I sound like a fool, but who seems to be the Power moving the pieces on the chessboard-at Lissen Carak, and in Harndon. And perhaps elsewhere.”

This was not the conversation for which she had prepared for the last hour while walking and riding and climbing. She took a deep breath.

“What do you guard, under the vaults and dungeons of Lissen Carak?” he asked her.

“That is not my secret,” she said.

He nodded. “But you admit there is a secret there,” he said. “What have you done that I cannot be killed?” he asked. “Even for you, this is a potent witchery.”

She sat back on her stool. Leaned her head into the stone of the back wall, slanting upwards into the white blur of the water that made the front wall.

“Don’t you think we’d be better with blatant seduction?” she asked.

He laughed. His laugh-the open honesty of it-made her laugh.

“Amicia, is your love of God so great, the feeling so wonderful, that you have no room in you for earthly love?” he asked.

She made a face. “What would you have me say? But yes.” She shook her head. “I think there was a time-not so long ago-when I’d have fallen into your arms.” She flushed. “But something has changed in me. There is a point, in prayer-in the ascent to God-when you must guard yourself carefully against sin. And then, I’m sorry, a point where sin seems a little foolish. When it no longer tempts. Where earthly love is but a pale companion.”

“Ouch,” he said. He wore a brave smile, but she saw she’d cut him too deeply.

“Oh, my dear-I only want everyone to be happy,” she said.

He nodded. “What would you say if I said that’s how I feel for you?”

She made the face again. “I’d say that you are twenty-three or -four and you’ll feel differently in a year or two.” She held up a hand. “I’d say that your preoccupation with war makes it impossible for you to love me-or God-very deeply.”

He nodded. “Yes. I’d tell a squire with a new girl the same.” He crossed his booted legs. “So-to hell with love. What did you do?”

She looked at him. So close. So much himself. So many things about him she hated. And loved. Not always as easy to let it go as she claimed, even now, when she could feel the-the simple reality of God’s creation as firmly as she could feel the rock under her hip.

“I used…” She paused. She had a great deal to lose. And at another level, there were parts of this she had carefully avoided admitting, even to herself. “The Abbess was dead. The fortress almost fell. I had all that power Thorn released. I was failing-oh, Gabriel, how I was failing. The potentia was too much for me. The King-and the Queen-required healing.”

She closed her eyes. “And then God put a hand on me and steadied me. And the potentia turned steadily to ops. And I cast and cast.” She stared at the falls, but in her eyes were the results of a hundred healings, of men and women broken by battle and remade.

“I healed everything I touched,” she said. She still wondered at the thought.

Gabriel nodded but said nothing.

She turned to him. “Whoever-steadied me. Spoke to me.” She took a deep breath. “Then and later-but not since, which troubles Miriam. And me.” She pursed her lips a moment and frowned. “Then-the night I was going to… I might have-” She paused.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I don’t want to explain. I made a decision. Just as you do. The kind of decision that you make in battle-irrevocable, and binding. It is made. I have never hidden what I feel for you.” She looked him in the eye. “But I will not act on it.” She nodded crisply. “Ever.”

“But-” he began.

She got up. “Don’t ask. You love me? Don’t ask. If you sent Michael to his death to save your company-would you?”

He pursed his lips. Had he known, for a moment his expression was the twin of what hers had been. “You’re not an easy friend. Yes, I can see myself doing it.”

She nodded. “Let’s say it worked. Michael dead, the company saved. How often would you care to revisit that decision?”

He rose, too. “I think-I think I understand.” He shook his head. “Oh, Amicia.”

Impulsively, she put a hand behind his head and kissed him-quickly, on the lips, the way she might kiss Katherine or Father Arnaud. “I will teach your children,” she said. “I just won’t bear them.”

He stood for a moment, as if stunned. Then he knelt at her feet, and kissed one of her hands.

From his knees, he smiled. “Am I really unkillable?” he asked.

She grinned. Breath flowed out of her, and her shoulders relaxed.

“Don’t press your luck,” she said.

After that, they spoke for almost an hour-easily, talking. Mostly, he told her what he had learned in Liviapolis, and from the Wyrm. She was reticent about the secrets of Lissen Carak, but she grunted at some of his theories.

“What did Father Arnaud think of your Wyrm?” she asked, when it was clearly time for them to go.

“The Wyrm restored his powers to heal,” Gabriel said.

Instead of responding, she went and put a hand into the waterfall. She drank-the water chilled her hand almost instantly.

“Before we go back to the world,” she said. “Tell me why you are coming to peace with God.”

“Is this confession?” he asked. “Bless me, Mother, for it is roughly ten years since my last confession. Shall I start with the murders or the lechery?”

“Blasphemy comes so easily to you,” she said.

“My mother has always seen herself as God’s peer.” He shrugged.

“I like your mother,” Amicia said. “I think you need to stop hiding from her, and behind her. We all have mothers.” She took his hands. “God?”

He nodded. “Oh, I think I have allowed myself to fall into the same trap that every highly-strung boy and girl since Adam and Eve has fallen into. That I was specially cursed by God.”

“Rotten theology,” she said.

“Mmm.” His non-committal grunt was almost lost in the water sounds. “I’m not yet entirely convinced. And then, instead of miraculous conversion, my dear Sister, you will find me merely a tiresome agnostic. Asking all the usual questions-why so there so much suffering? Why is the world run by a handful of malicious super-entities with special powers? Where is the proof of God’s love?” He looked down at her hands. “I confess that when you hold my hands, I have a frisson of belief in God’s love.”

“Is there a better line of patter in all the spheres?” she said, eyes wide. “Love me, and I’ll come to God?”

They laughed together. It was a good laugh.

“You will find another,” she said.

“Never,” he said.

“Yes, love. Now be easy.” She reached out to touch him, and felt a frisson of power-merely an echo of power. But she knew the taste, and she smiled, because Ghause had put a love-spell on her, and it made her laugh. “Like to like,” she murmured.

“What’s that?” Gabriel said.

“Thanks,” Amicia said. “This was-beautiful.”

Gabriel bowed. “We should go back.”

Two hours later, they re-joined the column south of the bluffs, and crossed Sixth Bridge at its head. Perhaps there were ribald comments, but Sister Amicia’s demeanour laughed them to scorn. She rode with the captain, and her sisters, too, and by the time the column halted for a midday meal, their light-heartedness had spread down the column.

After lunch, Bad Tom joined them. The herds were now almost a full day behind. But he rode with Ser Gabriel and the nuns and Chris Foliak and Francis Atcourt, exchanged loud gests with Ser Danved, tried and failed to provoke Ser Bertran. They hawked for an hour, and secured some partridges for dinner, and they met Ser Gavin, who’d taken the advance guard well down the road.

While the two brothers were talking a bird appeared above them, and every hermetical practitioner in the column looked up, all together.

Ser Alcaeus, in the rear with the Moreans, spurred up the column in time to join the captain as he retrieved the enormous bird, an imperial messenger. He took the bird, smoothed its feathers and gentled it, and then deftly slipped off the two message tubes.

“Encrypted,” he said. He handed them to the captain.

“How far to camp?” Ser Gabriel asked his brother.

Ser Gavin-a new man since seeing his affianced lady at Lissen Carak-pointed ahead. “Two leagues. Next ridge, and just beyond.”

The captain pushed the two tubes up under his chin and looked at Ser Alcaeus. “If I stop here to read them,” he said, “we won’t have any supper.”

Alcaeus made a moue. “It’s Lent,” he said. “Supper will be too dull for words.”

Chris Foliak leaned over. “It’s almost never Lent at my table,” he said-but when he caught Amicia’s eye, he had the good grace to look away.

The imperial messenger was the end of their day of Maying, as Amicia thought of it. They rode faster and with purpose-so fast that she dropped back with her sisters, afraid that Mary would have a mishap. So she missed the captain’s arrival. But when she rode into the camp-with most of the tents already up, and no one behind her but the Moreans-she found Nell laying out their bedding.

“Many thanks, Nell!” she said. The beautiful day had dried the blankets, even on the rump of her horse, and she looked forward to sleep-dry sleep.

“Captain says for you to come when it’s convenient,” Nell said. “Which means as soon as you can, Sister.”

She entered the red pavilion to the sound of silence. Ser Gavin was there, and Ser Michael, and Ser Thomas and Ser Christos, and Ser Alcaeus stood by the captain. He was writing on wax. Cully sat with his legs crossed, drinking wine.

Everyone looked serious. And they all looked at her-her heart missed a beat. They looked at her as if someone had died.

“What?” she asked.

Gabriel-she couldn’t think of him as the captain, today-rose and came over to her.

“The King,” he said gently. “The King has disestablished your order, with the consent of the archbishop. He has unmade the Order of Saint Thomas.”

She sighed. “No king-not even the Patriarch-can unmake what God has made,” she said.

Ser Michael rose. “On behalf of all the company, Sister,” he said. “You and the Prior, and Father Arnaud-you are all an example to us every day.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “I agree,” he said. “What will you do?”

“Have a cup of wine,” Amicia said, sitting. She couldn’t bring herself to laugh. “I need to think.”

“You are welcome in our council, Sister,” Ser Michael said, reminding her that she was, in fact, intruding on a council of war. It was obvious from the two maps on the table and the wax tablets at every hand.

“That can’t have been the only news,” Amicia said.

Ser Alcaeus looked as if he might protest, but Ser Gabriel smiled at her-a warmth to his smile which she bathed in for a moment. A guilty pleasure. “No. The Queen’s trial is set for Tuesday next week-at the tournament. There’s a long list of attainders, forfeitures and treasons.”

“My father is to be executed,” Ser Michael said with chilling equanimity.

“Half the nobility is to be taken and executed,” Gabriel said. “Apparently by the other half, and a handful of Galles.”

“Scarce a handful,” Ser Thomas said. “Three hundred lances with that monster, Du Corse.”

Ser Michael laughed. “Seldom is a man so aptly named.”

“There’s open faction and war in Harndon,” Gabriel said. “The commons against the nobles, or so it appears. The King has managed to attaint Ser Gerald Random.”

“The richest and the most loyal man in the kingdom,” muttered Ser Gavin.

“There’s refugees fleeing the city, the King is considering martial law, and it would appear that the Archbishop of Lorica is the prime mover of all this.” Gabriel flung a small, almost transparent piece of parchment on the table.

Ser Michael frowned. “It’s as if he wants civil war.”

Gabriel nodded. “Someone wants civil war. Someone very clever.”

Michael shook his head. “Send for the company.”

Gabriel shook his head in turn. “Why? We’re not under attack. Listen, my friends-we have a licence to ride armed to a tournament. We’re going to the tournament, and we are within the law.”

Suddenly, Amicia saw it. “You’re going to fight for the Queen!” she said.

Ser Michael’s head snapped around, and so did Ser Gavin’s.

Gabriel had the look of insufferable triumphant pleasure that he wore when one of his little schemes went well. His lips pursed and his cheeks were stretched and he looked like a cat who had caught a mouse.

“I am, too,” he said.

“May we all live to get you there,” Ser Michael said. “You bastard. I want to fight for the Queen!”

Gabriel shook his head. “You’re going to rescue your father. And some other people.”

Bad Tom rubbed his hairy chin. “We’re going to cut our way in and out?” he said with evident pleasure.

The Red Knight sighed. “No, Tom. No, we’re going to make every effort to be reasonable, responsible knights who do not want to inflict public violence on people already at the verge of civil war.”

Bad Tom grinned. “You’re just saying that.” He smiled. “You’ll need to run courses every day.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “I will-but I don’t want to be injured.”

His brother laughed mirthlessly. “You are the original glory-thief. If you’re injured, I’m sure one of us can find the time to take your place.”

There was some forced laughter.

Bad Tom grinned ear to ear. “It’s fewkin’ de Vrailly?” he asked.

Ser Gabriel shrugged. “It won’t be the King in person. De Vrailly is his champion.”

Ser Gavin looked at his brother. “He’s mine,” he said. “As God is my witness. I want him.”

The knights at the table looked at each other.

Ser Gavin leaned forward. “I’m the best jouster.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, and then smiled at his brother. “Some days.” He sat back. “The Queen asked me, last fall. I don’t think she knew what was at stake then-”

Tom Lachlan slapped his thigh. “At stake!” he said, laughing. “Damn me, that’s good.”

The next two days on the road were not like the first week. They moved faster, into the northern Albin, on better roads, crossing the great bridges over the river with each great bend, and paying tolls to local lords at every bridge. The King’s officers maintained the bridges and the roads, and local men collected the tolls and passed them to Harndon. Trade on the Royal Road was one of the major sources of northern revenue.

“Why doesn’t the Royal Road run all the way to Albinkirk?” Sister Katherine asked one evening.

Ser Gavin, who had just sung evensong with the nuns, made a face. “Mostly, because of my da,” he said. “In the dark times before Chevin, the creatures of the Wild ruined every road they could find-they tried to cut Albinkirk off from Harndon altogether.” He shook his head. “The great lords of the north used to maintain the northern stretches of the road. My da doesn’t see any need to be connected to Harndon or to pay taxes there.”

“So-” Amicia could see it as if on a map in her head-which it was, in a way, in her memory palace. “So north of Sixth Bridge…”

“North of Sixth Bridge is a network of little muddy trails rather than a single maintained road. Even under the old King, the gorge and the highlands made it hard to maintain a big road.” Ser Gavin stared off into the evening. “If we had a good king, and time, and peace, we’d finish the road-and that would spur trade, and link the north more closely to the south.”

“Ser Gerald showed that it could be done by boat. All the way to Lorica.” Sister Amicia couldn’t help but watch as Ser Thomas and Ser Gabriel came together on the plain to her right. Their armour glowed in the twilight, and their horses’ hooves shook the earth.

Ser Gavin nodded. “I will go join them-I’m late getting armed. Random’s boats made it, and will again this year. But it’s four days getting around the falls, and in a wet spring, with the river high-a hard row above the falls in the gorge.” He looked out over the rich fields. “But if the kingdom’s ever to be united-the river and the road will both have to go all the way through.”

South of Fifth Bridge, there was traffic on the roads. They passed a late convoy rolling north-a convoy that knew less than they did about events in Harndon. They were still three days from Lorica.

“Lorica on Good Friday,” Amicia said to Sister Mary. “We can observe it in the Basilica!”

She made bright small talk with her nuns and tried to ignore the signs around her, but the soldiers looked grimmer and grimmer as they moved south. They had begun to see refugees on the roads-at first, they were mostly prosperous people with carts. But a day out from Lorica, they were seeing hundreds of people, families, and some had already been robbed. They looked like tinkers-dirty, carrying sacks of belongings with spare clothes and odd items attached any which way.

Neither the nuns nor the soldiers could ignore them. Many begged for food-many told harrowing tales.

Ser Gabriel found her towards afternoon on the tenth day on the road. “I’m not going to Lorica,” he said.

“I saw you send Mikal off to the east,” she replied.

“Good eye, then. There are small roads now, on both sides of the river. We’ll turn east and make for the highlands and try to outflank the refugees.”

“You’re not telling me everything,” she said.

For the first time, anger flashed across his face, and he was impatient. “I’m not lying. I can tell you what I guess, but what I know makes a very slim volume. I wish you were not here. Is that too frank? They want you. This is… orders of magnitude worse than what I expected. I feel like a fool-practising for a joust when the whole kingdom is coming apart like a doll crushed under a wagon wheel.”

He looked away, as if he’d annoyed himself.

“You don’t like to feel as if you are not in control,” she said.

“That’s facile. No one’s in control in a war, but this is-insane. A king, ripping apart his own land and his own marriage?”

Amicia nodded. “Well, I shall miss Easter in the basilica of Lorica,” she said. “But I’m not foolish enough to ride off on my own.”

He nodded. “Good,” he said.

That was it-no flirting and no discussion.

“I think we’ve become part of their company,” she confided to Katherine, who laughed mirthlessly.

“One of the pages offered to marry me, if his knight would allow it,” Katherine said. “I think I’m old enough to be his mother.”

Sister Mary blushed.

They rode east, away from the setting sun.

That was a long night.

What the captain hadn’t mentioned was that they wouldn’t be stopping to camp. The turn east was accompanied by a further increase in speed, with veteran squires leading the files in alternating walking and trotting their horses. Even Katherine began to suffer, and by moonrise, Amicia was chewing her lower lip in mingled fatigue and pain. Sister Mary was moaning.

The column halted. The moon was three-quarters full; the narrow road was clear and fairly hard between darkened fields.

“Dismount,” came down the column.

Ser Christos, very chivalrously, leapt from his riding horse and helped Sister Mary off her mount.

Sister Katherine slid from the saddle, tired but unbeaten. “Don’t tell me that this is nothing next to Christ’s Passion,” she said. “I know it is nothing, but it is sufficient penance for everything I’ve ever thought about Miriam.”

Pages came down the column, shadows shifting in the odd, moon-shot darkness. They had feedbags already prepared, and they helped the nuns put them on their horses’ heads.

Nell appeared at Amicia’s elbow. “Cap’n says you have about half an hour, and is everyone all right?” she asked, in his accent exactly.

Amicia waved a tired hand. “No one ever died of riding sores,” she said. “I hope.”

All too soon, they were off again, the whole column a quiet jingle of horse harness and mail and steel plate and leather. They passed through a small hamlet-dogs barked, but no one came to their doors.

Past the hamlet they turned suddenly south, and she realized they were riding along the crest of a tall, shallowly sloped ridge, and she could see the twinkling lights of a dozen distant villages-odd that they should have light so late.

South. She knew enough stars to know that they had turned south, towards Harndon, and that the smoke on the horizon to the west must be the breakfast fires of Lorica, the kingdom’s second city.

They didn’t stop or make camp.

By noon, Amicia was asleep in her saddle. She dozed away an hour or more, and woke sharply to find the column halted in deep forest. Behind her, Ser Christos was again helping Sister Mary to dismount-or rather, to collapse.

Pages appeared and gathered the horses. Amicia’s was done-lathered all down his flanks and wild-eyed.

She didn’t know the page who took her mount, but the boy smiled. “Never you mind, Sister, I’ll have your little mare right as rain by tonight.”

“So we’re to sleep?” she asked. She was too tired for anger or complaint.

It was like the convent, after all.

The page shrugged. “No one told me. But if we’re currying and feeding ta’ horses, stands ta’ reason we won’t move for some time. Eh?” He winked.

Sister Amicia gathered the other two nuns and led them to the shade of a great oak tree. They lay down-Mary collapsed-and slept.

Amicia awoke with a tree root carving a hole in her side to realize that she had slept through Christ’s Passion and she was instantly on her knees. When most of the rest of the company was awake, she led them in prayers of contrition.

A valet brought her a bowl of oatmeal.

“Oatmeal?” she asked.

“Nicomedes says it’s Good Friday,” Bobert, the youngest valet, said. “No meat, no fish.”

Ser Gabriel rode up, and Amicia was distantly pleased to see that his red jupon was rumpled and something had left a crease on his forehead. He smiled at her.

“This is your notion of Good Friday observance?” she asked.

“Fasting and travail?” He nodded. “Pretty much-ah, here’s Tom.”

Ser Thomas came up with a dozen heavily armed Hillmen at his tail, all mounted. “Well, Kenneth Dhu has the herd until we get this done,” he said. “You made good time.”

“Only the next week will see what ‘good time’ might have been,” Ser Gabriel said.

Almost as soon as the column moved off they left the woods, which were not the deep forest Amicia had imagined but instead a small copse of carefully tended great oaks on a rich manor. As the sun set in the west, Amicia looked around her. She could see fields-and to the east, mountains, their tall, snow-capped summits catching sun.

“Wolf’s Head, the Rabbit Ears, White Face and Hard Rede,” Nell said, pointing to them. “My family’s from these parts. Morea’s another hundred leagues over that way.”

Ser Christos smiled at the page. “Not my part of Morea, young maiden. This is the soft south, where men grow olives, not warriors.”

Behind his back, Nell made a face. “Who’d want to grow warriors?” she asked.

They rode until the sky was dark and the stars twinkled overhead, and then dismounted and drank a cup of wine, every man and woman, their reins in their hands. Then most men changed horses, and the nuns were put up on three strange riding horses, and the next few miles passed swiftly as the three women learned to manage bigger, more dangerous animals. But no one was thrown, and they had another halt at a crossroad. There were four big wagons pulled into the other arm of the cross, blocking any traffic from the high hedges on either side.

Ser Christos grunted.

“What is it?” Amicia asked him.

“Food,” Christos said. “I wondered. He’s purchased food.” He nodded, as if satisfied.

The captain himself materialized out of the darkness like an unclean spirit. “It’s easy to get food now,” he said. “Wait ’til we’re running north. Then it will be exciting.” But he smiled, and his smile suggested he was more comfortable with the situation than he had been the day before.

Morning found them in another grove-this one bigger, on the eastern slope of another great ridge. Amicia thought she glimpsed the Albin running down to the sea in the middle distance-twenty miles. That put them far east of Harndon.

Holy Saturday.

They made a small camp. The women cooked-a rare event in the company-and made beef soup with dumplings and new greens-something Amicia hadn’t had before, but the nuns ate without complaint.

Ser Gavin and the other knights came for morning prayers. As they were singing, Sister Amicia saw one of the great imperial messengers circle and land on the captain’s wrist, and suddenly her outdoor service was much smaller. But the captain must have brushed them off-most of the knights came back to sing.

They turned west. For some reason, Amicia’s heart quickened. They moved at a trot for more than an hour and then turned south towards the river, rode into the outer wards of a small castle, dismounted, and collapsed into sleep.

When Amicia awoke, it was almost dark, and men were already mounting.

Ser Gabriel took her elbow. “We’ll halt at the monastery at Bothey,” he said. “Unless I miss my timing, you can all go hear Easter Vigil and greet the risen saviour.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I’ll spare you the details,” he said. He didn’t grin. He looked terrible, with straw on his clothes and deep circles under his eyes.

“Don’t be a foolish martyr,” she said. “You need rest, to fight. And Easter mass might help you in many ways.”

Then, he smiled. “Perhaps,” he said.

They rode into the late evening. The air was warm, fragrant with a later spring than they’d known ten days earlier in Albinkirk, where there was still snow under the trees. Here, it was the edge of summer, and in the last light of day, flowers bloomed in a riot of colour and scent along the road’s edges, and all the hedgerows were thick walls of green guarding fields where the plantings were already a fist tall or taller.

Darkness fell. An owl hooted repeatedly ahead of the column, and then another, to their right-the north, she thought.

The whole column moved from a walk to a trot.

Sister Mary didn’t even groan. She was a better rider every day, and she didn’t complain at all. She hadn’t moaned since they slept under the tree. Nor did Sister Katherine speak of the joys of riding anymore.

In fact, no one spoke at all. The saddles creaked, the armour clacked, and the company passed like shades of the past along the Harndon Road.

The moon climbed the sky.

She dozed, and then awoke to hear owls hooting to the front and to the right, again, and the column shuffled to a halt.

Amicia kept riding. She told herself that she wanted to be at mass if it could possibly be arranged, but she knew in her heart that she wanted to know what was happening. She could taste smoke-in the back of her throat, on the tip of her tongue. She saw the Moreans walling people-refugees-away from the column-at sword’s point.

At the head of the column there were a dozen men standing on the road around two points of mage light.

There was a newcomer in the command group and she knew him immediately from the siege-and took his hand.

“Ser Gelfred!” she said.

He knelt in the road, and she blessed him-and in moments she and her sisters had work. Gelfred and his corporal, Daniel Favour, were both wounded-long slashes with much blood and little immediate danger beyond infection. The three nuns sang and healed.

“Ser Ranald’s inside the palace with a dozen of the lads,” Gelfred said. “I can’t say more. You told us to keep our operations separate.”

Ser Gabriel smiled without humour. “Don’t do everything I tell you,” he said. “So you have no idea what Ranald is up to?”

“Not no idea,” Gelfred said. He smiled. “Sister, that’s the first time in four days I haven’t been in pain. God loves you.”

She smiled.

Ser Gelfred was back to work. “Not no idea, Captain. We brought Lady Almspend away a week ago; and yester eve Ranald handed us Ser Gerald and one of the aldermen. Alderwomen.” He shrugged. “And the paynim-no, I lie, he came from the knights.”

“The knights?” Bad Tom asked.

“The Archbishop’s disbanded the Order and declared all their lands and money forfeit. He tried to seize all of them.” Gelfred shrugged. “They’ve too many friends-by all the Saints, even the Galles love the Order. They probably had warning before the King signed the writ. Prior Wishart took all his people-he’s gone.” Gelfred wrinkled his nose. “Not gone far. Waiting for you, I reckon.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Disbanded the Order,” Sister Mary said.

“I told you, Sister,” Amicia whispered.

“It’s different, here,” Mary said, sounding scared. “Disbanded? What of our vows?”

“Our vows are unchanged, as is the Order,” Amicia said with far more confidence than she felt.

“And the smoke?” Ser Gavin asked.

“A good part of the south end of Harndon was afire yesterday,” Gelfred said. “The commons burned the archbishop’s palace.” He didn’t quite grin. “Someone took all the relics and-well-all the treasure from the cathedral.”

Ser Gabriel was stone-faced. “Harndon is burning?” he asked.

Gelfred nodded.

“Someone’s laughing,” he said bitterly.

“There’s more. The prince of Occitan is just south of the city. He’s made a camp-not a fortified camp, but an open camp like a tournament.” Gelfred coughed into his hand. “I-hmm-took the liberty of telling him that we had reason to believe the King would attack him.” Gelfred raised both eyebrows. “I do not think he believed me,” he added.

“How many men does he have?” Bad Tom asked, pragmatically.

“About what you have. A hundred lances-perhaps more.” Gelfred shook his head. “The Galles have three hundred new lances, and all the King’s Guard, and every sell-sword in the south.” He didn’t laugh, but again he allowed a smile of satisfaction to dent his mouth. “Including a fair number of my lads and Ranald’s.”

“Is the Prior at the monastery?” Ser Gabriel asked. He cocked an eyebrow.

Gelfred nodded. “Aye.”

Gabriel nodded, too. “Well-Easter vigil for everyone, then,” he said. “Mount.”

An hour later, and the company rode under the two high towers of the famous Abbey of the South-the Abbey of Bothey. Bothey had long been a favourite Abbey of both the Kings of Alba and the Earls of Towbray. It had all the marks of riches and royal favour-gold and silver vessels, magnificent frescos, some very old indeed-carved choir stalls and an altar screen of two knights in ancient harness fighting a dragon.

For all their wealth, the monks were not decadent. The brothers of the Order tilled their own land, and the sisters from the “women’s house” sowed grain and made the best fine linen in the Nova Terra.

The company were led silently into a dark chapel by cowled monks in black and brown habits. Even the captain was silent and respectful. The monks on the gates had included some with robes over full armour, and two stern-faced nuns had received Amicia and her sisters. The darkened chapel was the size of many a fair town church, with rafters sixty feet above a marble floor of interlocking hexagons. The chapel was so dark that Amicia could not see her hand in front of her face-literally, for she tried. She was led off to the right, where the nuns and novices of two orders stood in silent communion.

No bells rang.

It was the last moment of Lent.

There was a rustling in the dark, at the back of the church, a single candle was lit by a monk, and a priest of the Order of Saint Thomas began to pray.

The single candle illuminated the magnificent chapel of the Abbey of Bothey. Fifty years ago, one of the most gifted pargeters Harndon had ever nurtured had painted the whole chapel in one summer in the Etruscan manner; floor to ceiling paintings of the events of Christ’s life and Passion. The gold leaf alone was staggering, swimming in burnished metallic light even with only a single lit candle-and the quality of the painting was superb. Saint James was martyred, Jesus healed a man made blind and the now-sighted man rebuked the military governor for unbelief, his armour a bronze-gold against the brilliant polished lemon-gold of the background.

And then monks and nuns began to sing, as did the knights of the Order, the brother sergeants and the sisters. There were twenty knights in their robes standing in the choir stalls, and a dozen sisters of the Order from the two houses in Southern Harndon. For Amicia and her sisters, it was a homecoming-a delight mixed with sadness. And the mass was one that Amicia would never forget, sung so well in a chapel so redolent with both splendour and meaning, surrounded by her own Order-and by the men and women of the company with whom she’d shared the road. As the first hour slipped away and the congregation sang the rolls of saints and martyrs, a taut expectancy filled the church, and as the bell outside tolled the middle of the night and the birth of a new day, Amicia lit her candle from a torch held by a knight of the Order, and the church sprang from darkness to bright light, and many of the monks and nuns produced hand bells from their robes and rang them joyously, so that the shrill riot of bells seemed to drive the darkness out and replace it with the throaty roar of gold and the coming dawn.

By the time the host was consecrated, every one of the company were on their knees on the hard stone floor-even the captain.

And after mass-as they celebrated their risen God-there was wine in the abbey’s paved courtyard, and an air of festivity that many would not have associated with monks and nuns living a life of cloistered virtue. Monks in brown habits lay under the stars on the smooth grass of the cloister’s central yard, discussing theology, and nuns sat in among the pillars of the double cloister, sipping strong red wine and laughing. Most of the knights of Saint Thomas were unarmed and unarmoured, the rest stood with their swords incongruous with their black monkish robes and academic caps, while the nuns of the Order-more worldly, and more given to the practice of medicine than to mystical contemplation-laughed louder and drank harder. For an hour or more, the threat of civil war was forgotten by most in the glory of God’s resurrection.

Amicia found herself in a spirited conversation about the theological failings of the Patriarch of Rhum and the Archbishop of Lorica. The Minorites who held the abbey had more than a few hermetical practitioners among them-practical men and one woman who could make small fires, light candles, and the like. They were outraged-and deeply uneasy-at the sudden change in direction. They had thought themselves blessed, and were now told to believe themselves accursed. Many of the knights had some turn of talent-and having already had their Order declared anathema, they were in no mood to discuss the intellectual possibilities or the failings of the scholastics in Lucrece.

As a nun of the Abbey at Lissen Carak, Amicia was both welcome and something of an oddity-the northern sisters hardly ever left their fortress. Amicia discovered in a few minutes of conversation that she was notorious as both a powerful mage and as a woman licensed to preach.

Ser Tristan, an older Occitan knight of the Order, frowned and admitted that he might not have been in favour of any woman saying mass.

“But you are one of ours,” he said. “And to hell with the archbishop.”

Sister Amicia wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or offended. She had been aware-at a distance-that there were factions in the church, but now she felt naive as she confronted their reality. Even in the midst of celebration, there were some to whom she was a hero, and others who clearly kept their distance.

She was reminded of her duty, and her place, over and over-a lesson in humility that she had the grace to accept.

After two cups of good wine and an hour of conversation, praise, censure, and a hundred introductions, she found that she was exhausted-almost too tired to sleep. While the knights who knew her from the siege carried her from group to group like a prize, introducing her to the monks, priests and nuns of both orders, Katherine and Mary had followed some of the other Thomasine sisters to the women’s house, and Amicia was on the point of asking Ser Michael for directions-she could scarcely keep her eyes open-when a small girl came, curtsied, and said Prior Wishart had summoned her. She found him in the outer yard with two secular knights she didn’t know and she put her hands in her sleeves and stood demurely, waiting. She was afraid she might fall asleep on her feet.

He glanced at her and smiled-a clear confirmation that she was to await him.

She allowed her eyelids to fall, and in the next few beats of her heart received a pulse of apprehension as great as she had ever known.

Something evil.

Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, but the low murmur of voices and the sound of celebration-from the town below them as much as from the yard-spoke only of the feast of Easter.

The prior came and took her hand. “I won’t keep you long,” he said.

He looked as tired as she felt.

“I need you to tell me anything you can,” he said.

“About Ser Gabriel?” she asked, understanding all too well.

“Sister Amicia, we’re teetering on the brink of civil war-or sliding past it.” Prior Wishart took her arm and led her to the abbey walls and then up stone steps to the crenellations. In the distance, on the edge of the dark horizon, there was a glow. And the smell of smoke was no longer hidden by incense.

“Where is my duty now?” he asked.

She didn’t think he was asking her.

“Can I trust him?” the Prior asked her.

She put her hands to her mouth. She almost giggled-a reaction of fatigue. “Yes,” she said.

Prior Wishart peered at her from the darkness. “You have a-hmm-relationship with him,” he said.

“I have not slept with him,” she said a little too quickly.

“Sister, I have been a soldier and a priest for a long time.” He looked out into the night. “If I thought you had then I would not curse you, but neither would I look to you for guidance. Some men-more men every day…” He paused. “They wonder if the man who is called the Red Knight-” He shrugged. “If he is the King’s bastard son. I have heard it said many times now. And I have a report that his mother, the duchess, is suggesting the north should make its own king.”

Amicia put her whole weight against one of the merlons. “Isn’t our Order supposed to be above this sort of thing?” she asked.

“Never. No organization, no order, no group is above the manipulations of others. If we are strong, we can help shape the final outcomes, and if we are weak, we may become the tool of someone powerful-a tool that cannot make its own decisions.” The Prior nodded. “One of my options is to take all of us across the sea, or into Morea. Another is to go into the north. To Lissen Carak. And await events there.”

Amicia was too tired for all this. “All I know is that he and his people think they will rescue the Queen,” she said.

“Ahh,” the Prior said. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “That is precisely what I wanted to hear.” He put a hand on her head. “Will he fight for the Queen?”

Amicia felt she would betray a confidence by answering, but she shrugged inwardly. “I believe Ser Gabriel views himself as the Queen’s Champion. Indeed, I believe she asked him-but before the role had quite such consequences.”

“Against the King?” the Prior asked quickly.

Amicia pursed her lips and snapped, “I have never heard him say aught against the King, or the Queen. He bears no love for the Galles.” She frowned. “I have attended a number of the meetings of his officers. They are open in their derision of the King’s weakness. But then-” She looked hard at the prior. “But then, so am I.”

“Bah,” Prior Wishart said. “It’s no treason at this point to think the King is mad or ensorcelled. Go sleep. Tomorrow will be very hard I suspect.”

She curtsied. “I sense something… evil,” she said.

Prior Wishart paused. “You are much stronger than I,” he said. “Yet I do feel some-malmaissance. Where is it, though? Is it Harndon, burning?”

She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and searched with her aethereal eye.

“It’s in the sky,” she said quietly.

Wishart looked up. He looked for long enough that her eyelids began to sag.

“Happy Easter, Sister,” he said. “I have to hope that it is a figment of our fatigue and our crisis. I cannot believe we are open here-on this night-to direct attack. Go and sleep.”

She nodded, almost beyond speech, and went down from the wall. It was two or three hours after midnight-most of the abbey was asleep, and aside from the watch on the walls, most voices were stilled. The torches were out, and she took a wrong turn at the foot of the steps and found herself in the inner cloister, but aside from the monks lying on the grass, everyone was gone, and the only other men awake were some servants finishing the wine. She found the low tunnel, richly carved, that led from the inner cloister to the outer and, drawn by voices, she felt her way through the dark.

Halfway, in almost total darkness, she had another shock of apprehension. She thought for a moment it might be her fatigue as the Prior had said, but she closed her eyes and entered her palace and made a very small working-an open net of woven ops to catch the workings of others. It was a working she had learned from Gabriel.

She released it. And settled like a spider in a web to “see” what she might see in the aethereal.

She dropped out of her palace and felt her way forward, a portion of her awareness now tucked away in her palace.

Just at the end of the tunnel, four men were sitting in the shade of a grape arbor in the courtyard.

One of them was Gabriel-she’d know his voice anywhere. The big man was clearly Ser Thomas-a nose taller than any other man she’d ever met.

“Gabriel,” she said sharply.

He rose.

“There’s something-” she said, and extended her hand.

He reached out in the real.

The other two men were almost as big as Ser Thomas-a big red-headed knight of her own Order, who she knew by repute and by the sheer size of his nose. Ser Ricar Orcsbane.

And a black man the size of a small house, or so it seemed. The men rose as she approached and bowed-the black man very elegantly, by putting his hands together and bending at the waist.

“Sister Amicia, of the Order of Saint Thomas,” Gabriel said, and repeated it in passable Etruscan. His smile was tired, but warmed her nonetheless.

In her heart, she thought, I must get him to pay attention.

“This magnificent gentleman is Ser Pavalo l-Walīd Muḥammad Payam.” Ser Gabriel spoke the name cautiously-for once, it was a language he did not know. But the dark-skinned man bowed again and smiled at the sound of his name.

“You went to mass,” Amicia said. “I saw you.” She made herself smile, but she seized Gabriel’s hand and tried to drag him by main force into her memory palace.

“He says he craves your blessing.” Gabriel shrugged. “I have been to mass before and was not slain by lightning, nor do my infernal legions always make trouble.”

“He took the host,” Tom Lachlan said. “I expected the chapel to collapse.”

Between one sentence and the next he was there with her.

“There’s something out there-there. In that direction.” She pointed at the simulacrum of her sensory net in the aethereal, which was ripped asunder somewhere above her and to the north. Direction and distance were not the same in the aethereal as in the real.

Gabriel looked at the screen of aethereal force she had projected.

In the real, Amicia put a hand on the dark-skinned man’s hand and said a small prayer for his soul.

“I tried to get the infidel to come to mass,” Tom said. He grinned. “I mean, if the captain was there, what would one more damned soul matter?”

Amicia had suddenly had enough. “Don’t mock what you do not understand,” she snapped.

Tom was seldom baulked. But like most very dangerous men, he was not a fool. He bowed his head. “Sister?” he asked quietly.

“Something is wrong,” Ser Gabriel said. He was back in the real. He turned to look north. “Toby-my spear.”

Toby detached himself from a wall and ran for the stables.

“Amicia, get behind us,” Gabriel said. He still had her hand-and something about his instant willingness to believe her, to obey and react-

She turned to look.

Turned back to speak to him. She opened her mouth to say something neither of them would ever be able to forget, and she knew better-fatigue, religion, love, danger-it was a heady potion that transcended day-to-day and common sense, her usual guideposts all thrown down. The sense of wrongness now filled the air around her. Whatever it was, it was aimed for him, not her. She cast a protection, a mirror to confuse whatever the malevolence was; she borrowed his aura and put it on.

She raised a shield of glowing gold with a twitch of her be-ringed hand.

Something black fluttered out of the darkness onto her face, right through her shield.

At its touch, she screamed.

The Red Knight saw the change in her posture. He tossed the first working in his arsenal-

Fiat Lux.

Golden light leapt from a point fifty feet above them.

It revealed a beautiful horror-six magnificent, shimmering black moths, each the size of a great eagle, their wings the purest black satin shot with veins of blue-black that throbbed with ops and thick velvet-black bodies with elaborate black filigree and lace antennae-and probisci of obscene dimensions, long as baselards and swollen with a velvety hardness that made the skin crawl, tipped with adamant that shone like blued steel.

One of them fluttered against Amicia even as the light burgeoned.

Its probiscis throbbed with power and bit-and she screamed.

The Ifriquy’an’s long, curved sword slipped from the scabbard and flowed out and up like liquid metal in the silver-gold of mixed moonlight and mage light. He was a pace behind Amicia and his sword struck at an angle from the scabbard-severed a great, rapidly beating wing and the probiscis at its base in one strike-the sword passed through its target and swept back, was reversed, and swept back up, almost the same line, cutting off a lock of her hair as her knees gave from the poison and opening the velvet body from base to eye-cases in a shower of ops and potentia and black acid blood.

Amicia fell in the loose-limbed sprawl of death.

The Red Knight’s sword snapped from the scabbard and cut into another of the monsters-this one intended for him, wings spread and virulent poison already dripping. His sword slammed into it-and bounced off.

He’d had a clue that they were aethereal from the sparks. He rolled, a leather-soft wing clipped his thigh and something disgustingly velvety touched his hand-his arming sword reached out, striking a panicked blow. But as his point came on line he thrust-the blade tip snagged its material belly and because it was flying and had no anchor, it rebounded. The point, sharp as one of Mag’s needles, had still failed to bite. But it was pushed, tumbling, through fifteen feet of darkness to slam into one of its mates.

Ser Gabriel realized then that they were all coming for him-but his attention was on Amicia. “They’re magicked!” he shouted. “No mortal weapon will bite!”

He rolled under the table where the men had been sitting. One of them slipped past Ser Pavalo and landed awkwardly on the table-cups exploded out, and it flipped the table.

He saw Bad Tom, armed with the dragon’s sword, split another one in half, the two sides lit in a white-veined horror for one beat of a frightened man’s heart, the two wings each beating separately once, ripping the two halves apart and spraying black ichor. Ser Pavalo rolled, passing under a gout of the foul stuff, and rose to strike from beneath a moth with a rising cut-then whirled, and struck again as if gifted with eyes in the back of his head.

Gavin had no magic sword. He leapt onto the back of the one on the table. It was low and slow, and it didn’t seem to have any weapons that could reach its back-Gavin got his arms under its wings as if putting a small man in a head lock, and pushed the body away from him with both hands and all the passion of abhorrence, and the wings seemed to shred.

It was all perfectly silent.

Gabriel saw two of the black velvet horrors unengaged-one attempting to rise over the melee, and the other settling on the prone figure of the dying nun.

“Amicia!” he screamed.

He threw himself towards her. In the aethereal, he flooded her bridge with light-and, improvising heartbeat by heartbeat-tried forcing ops back down the bond-first through the ring, and then the strange working on his ankle.

He refused to accept that the pale corpse on the bridge was hers.

He poured his power into their bond…

One of the moths had him. He was on his stomach, stretched over her body, and the moth was settling on him, the weight like that of a dog-he felt the…

In the moment that the thing’s probisicis penetrated his back, he took his hate and terror and pushed it right up through the contact, into its body.

The moth exploded.

The poison was lethal, but slower than hermetical counters-he set a construct to cleanse the wound with fire even as he reached for her-

– and found her.

“Anything!” he shouted at the universe. “I will give anything.”

Then, desperation winning over mastery, he pushed her aethereal form off the bridge and into the torrent of green potentia that rushed under it.

The power-the raw power that she channelled so often-washed the caked, burned flakes off her face and left new, fresh skin. Her green gown was gone and she was naked.

He knew his myths, and when he’d held her in the stream long enough, he hauled her by main force onto the bridge, rolled her over and held the leg by which he’d held her in the power.

He had his arms under her arms, his hands clasped under her breasts, when her eyes opened.

She took a breath.

And another.

He pulled her back onto the bridge.

In the real, she was fully clothed. But her eyes were open.

“I thought I was dead,” she said aloud.

The last moth, struck repeatedly by two Fell Swords, tried to reach its prey once more and was spitted on the spear, wielded by Toby, who levered the corpse away from his captain and the nun.

“You’re alive,” Gabriel said. He backed away, his voice strange, his arms still clasped around her as if he was unwilling to let go, and he dragged her away from the corpses of the moths even as Prior Wishart and half the monks of the abbey came at a run, a forest of vengeful swords. There was a long scream from the direction of the cloister.

He was reluctant to let her go. Aware that he had just made a pact with-something-for her life. He could feel it.

He heard the screams. He hauled her into a chair and let her go-one hand lingering on her hair.

It was foolish-stupid-but he had not touched her in so long…

He snapped himself to attention and fell into his own palace.

“There are more of them,” Prudentia said.

He nodded. Having immolated one at point blank range, he had their making in his head, and he knew how to unmake them. More, his rage was such-

“Take a breath,” Prudentia said. “You are badly hurt yourself.”

Instead, he reached out into the darkness, and located them-only three, and those without the ferocity of purpose that had so nearly defeated him.

One was in the town, having killed two women and a child and a cat.

One was in the cloister hunting monks.

One was high in the air overhead, watching. Or rather, monitoring.

Prudentia said, “by offering such a promise you have given something a back door into your soul.”

Gabriel reached out into the night with the same working he had used at the Inn of Dorling. He layered it with a simple working of identity from his intimate contact with the one that had landed on him.

In a flash of golden fire, a low stone house in the town exploded.

To his left, in the cloister, the moth was suddenly outlined in an angry red-and then fell as ash over the rose garden.

High overhead, the largest of all the moths turned away for home.

But Gabriel was sometimes an impatient hunter, and he followed it across the sky with his thought, leaving his wounded body to collapse to the cobbles.

He had never tried this particular form of aethereal movement, and it was terrifying-like being at court while naked. He was bereft of many of his powers-a thing of wind and fancy.

But rage bore him up. Rage cancelled out rational thought and kept him to his mission. He followed the fleeing thing up into the light of the moon, and out, running north to its master.

It didn’t get more than three miles. Gabriel took it in the air and subsumed it, and like a conjuror he caught the single strand of aethereal will by which it was bound to its distant master and he-kept it.

And then he had to find his way back to his body.

When he did, he found it bruised, and with a burn the size of his hand with an ashy black centre high on his back, from which emerged an ugly dark trickle of something that stank.

He touched the growing dampness on his back and his vision tunnelled.

He was in a bed in the infirmary of the abbey. He let his eyes flutter open, and there was the Prior.

“I got them all,” he said grimly. “Is she alive?”

Prior Wishart allowed himself a tired smile. “She’s alive. But your officers have decided that you are not going anywhere today. There are new events, and new reports-the busy world has gone on without you.” He sat on the edge of Ser Gabriel’s bed. “I am not a cruel man-she lives and thrives. Her power cleared the cursed venom from your back at sunrise. I think she is now asleep.”

Ser Gabriel was pinned in the bed by the Prior. He wriggled, clearly reaching for his clothes.

“Give me a moment of your time, Prince Gabriel,” the Prior said.

He handed his charge a cup of warm wine.

“Poppy?” Ser Gabriel asked.

“Only honey,” the Prior said. “You will need all your wits today.”

An hour later-almost noon-they all gathered at the Abbot’s long table in his hall. Ser Gabriel sat with the Prior, and Ser Michael and Ser Alcaeus-with two imperial messenger birds supported on missal stands-sat opposite a swollen-faced Amicia and Ser Thomas, with Ser Gavin and Ser Ricar of the Order, the infidel, Ser Payam, and Ser Christos. There were two other knights of the Order and two lay knights. The Order had many secular members-knights who donated their time, especially to defend caravans or pilgrims.

But next to Ser Gelfred, at the head of the table, sat a young man in blue and yellow checky, whose curling beard and open-faced good looks were marred by youthful rage.

But he mastered himself and rose and bowed to all present.

Ser Gelfred rose with him. “Gentlemen and ladies, Prince Tancredo of Occitan.”

“The Queen’s brother,” Amicia said quietly to Sister Katherine, who sat slightly behind her.

The prince smiled at her. It was like the rising of the sun. Amicia was woman enough to appreciate that, despite his flushed cheeks and the hard, vengeful look around his eyes, his tanned skin and ruddy blond hair and his sharp nose made him one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen. Next to Ser Gabriel’s pale skin and dark hair-

They were a match in size and shape, as well.

The prince was still smiling at her.

“You are, sans doute, the most beautiful nun I have ever seen,” he said with a bow.

Ser Gabriel’s face made a funny twitch.

But he also bowed to her. “It is good to see you alive,” he said.

She felt herself flush.

The other knights-Ser Payam and Ser Thomas and Ser Ricar, all of whom had been badly burned by the ichor in the moths-rose and praised her, and she looked out the window. “It is God, my friends, not me,” she protested, but indeed, the praise of such men was sweet.

Ser Pavalo bowed to her again. He spoke in a language which sounded like Archaic.

“He says that he salutes your great power. He says, it is a gift from God.” Gabriel nodded. “I think he is thanking you for the healing, but I confess my Etruscan’s not as good as his and I’m not sure. Maybe he’s saying you are the most beautiful nun he’s ever seen, too.”

She glared at Gabriel, and he mocked her with his smile.

Prior Wishart cleared his throat.

Gabriel had the good grace to look abashed. He bowed to the prince. “Your grace-it is a pleasure to have you among us.”

Prior Wishart translated in liquid Occitan, which sounded to Albans like Gallish mixed half and half with Etruscan.

The prince nodded and frowned. He rolled out a long speech, sat back and crossed his arms on his chest.

“The prince says that his cousin Rohiri died this morning, covering his retreat-that he feels like a poltroon, and that he followed this man-this Gelfred-here expecting to save his sister and his own honour. And he says”-Prior Wishart frowned-“some other things which I decline to translate.” He spoke sharply in Occitan to the prince.

Prince Tancredo’s head snapped around. He glared at the Prior, flicked his glance to Amicia, and then flushed.

“I apologize,” he said with a shrug. “I agree. I am not myself.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “She has that effect on all of us,” he said.

“No, just you,” Ser Michael said. “Well, and the prince.”

Amicia gazed levelly at them, taking her high-carried head and careful diction from her former Abbess. “If you gentlemen are quite finished,” she said. “I believe all of us are interested in rescuing the Queen.”

Gelfred took the Red Knight’s parchment chart of Alba, rolling it out on the table. All the knights present drew their daggers, rondels and baselards, and placed them on the edges to pin the stiff hide in place.

He pointed at Harndon.

“The King-and de Vrailly-hold Harndon. They have five or six hundred lances and a strong infantry force.”

“What of the guilds?” the Prior asked. “My own news is three days old.”

Ser Alcaeus rose. “The guilds are scattered. The proscriptions have driven a great number of prominent city men into the countryside. Ser Gelfred has Ser Gerald-”

“Indeed, he will be in Lorica within the hour,” Gelfred put in.

“But most of the armourers, smiths, and fishmongers, too-have fled the capital.” Ser Alcaeus had a wax tablet he consulted.

“So-de Vrailly has the city,” the Prior said.

Ser Gabriel nodded. “Yes. Win or lose, Ser Ricar and Master Pye made the call for the skilled trades to flee before it came to massacre.”

Ser Ricar nodded.

“This morning,” Ser Alcaeus went on, “de Vrailly led a royal army through the gates to assault the Prince of Occitan’s camp.”

Gelfred nodded. “I warned him.”

“And here he is.” Ser Gabriel nodded.

“De Vrailly and Du Corse, the best of their soldiers, defeated the Occitans after a few hours’ fighting,” Ser Alcaeus said, rather undiplomatically. The prince writhed in his seat. His Alban was clearly good enough to take offence. “My source says that some of the guilds served in the royal army, and that city crossbowmen shot down the last of the prince’s knights.”

The prince slammed his fist on the table.

The Red Knight put a hand on Ser Alcaeus’s shoulder. “Enough!” he said. “The prince doesn’t need to be reminded of his sacrifice. How many lances did he save?”

The prince nodded. “Sixty,” he said. “Knights and squires, sixty of each.” He turned to the Prior and said something.

Prior Wishart nodded. “Spearmen.”

“Mais oui. Bien sur. We did not bring any pages or archers or, as you say, spear-men, as we thought that we were coming to a tourney-a bohars. And not a war.”

Ser Michael leaned forward. He glanced at the captain, who met his eye-encouraging him to speak. “But it is not war yet,” he said.

Bad Tom chuckled. “The barmy King has arrested his own wife an’ your da and it’s not war?” he asked.

Ser Michael managed a thin-lipped smile. “No, by God, it is not, Tom. My father had not paid his taxes, and his loyalty to the crown was…” He shrugged, and his steel pauldrons winked in the sunlight. “Not all it might have been. The arrest of the earl need not be cause for civil war. Nor, I think, is the arrest of the Queen.”

All around the table, men nodded.

The Prior stroked his beard.

The prince looked away, lips pursed in annoyance.

“Killing the Queen, on the other hand,” Ser Gabriel said quietly, “would probably break any remaining loyalties we all felt to the King. Is that not so?”

He looked around. “Gentlemen and ladies, I am a mercenary. I fight for money, and war is my business. In this instance, I find it ironic that I’m reminding you how disastrous war would be for this realm-internal civil war.”

One of the Order’s lay volunteers burst out. “It’s not civil war, Ser Gabriel! It’s all true-hearted Albans agin’ the Galles.”

But Prior Wishart shook his head-and so did Gelfred. Gelfred looked around slowly. “There were more Alban knights-and spearmen-fighting the Occitans than there were Galles,” he said. “De Vrailly and de Rohan have many adherents. Some are greedy men, ’tis sure. But many are merely loyal Albans, fighting for their King.”

Ser Gabriel nodded. “My lords, what we need to do is save the Queen. I think everyone here is aware that I am a warlock. I think many of you know how potent the good Sister Amicia is, as well.” Again, he looked around. Outside, the sun was dimmed briefly by a racing cloud, and then brightened again to a summer-like golden intensity. Easter Monday was a beautiful day. “I suspect that the King is ensorcelled,” he said.

Amicia nodded.

“This King has always been swayed by the nearest opinion, the last word.” He shrugged. “Or so my lady mother, his sister, has always maintained. Such a man would be easy to control with sorcery, I believe.” He looked around. “Whether he is drugged or ensorcelled, the immediate requirement is the rescue of the Queen. That is best done inside the rule of law, by one of us-me, unless you overrule me-fighting on her behalf tomorrow.”

The Prince of Occitan looked startled. Then he spoke to Prior Wishart, and after two or three sentences, he sat back.

“Prince Tancredo asks if you really believe that the Galles will just let you ride into the tourney ground and fight tomorrow? Do you even think that they will hold the tournament? They’ve arrested or attainted most of the participants.”

The Red Knight leaned back, and to Amicia he wore that insufferable look of pleasure he had when he felt he was smarter than everyone else. “They haven’t attainted me,” he said. “Or Michael, or Gavin, or Tom. In fact, no one at this table is attainted except the members of the Order-and the prince, against whom the King has ordered war. The rest of us can legally ride into the lists and fight.” He looked at the Prince. “Prince Tancredo, even tyranny has rules. De Vrailly has to appear to follow the law. He cannot just kill the Queen.”

Tom snorted. “O’ course he can. Boyo, I love ye like a brother, but they can rope us all in an’ kill us, every mother’s son. An’ tell the commons whatever story they please.”

The Red Knight nodded. “I’m not as great a fool as that, Tom. I disagree-but we have several loaded dice in this.”

Tom was cleaning his nails with a dirk as long as most men’s swords. “Eh? Name ’em, y’ loon.” He grinned and waved the knife. “I mean, I’ll come wi’ ye regardless of what mad drivel of a plan you cook up, but I’d like to hear what we have on our side.”

The Red Knight frowned. “I don’t like to lay my plans out.”

The table gave a collective sigh.

Amicia leaned forward. “I think that this time, Gabriel, you must share. We are all risking our lives. This is not one of your military pranks.”

The Red Knight’s face held a flash of annoyance-even anger. But then he met her eye and smiled.

“Yes. Well.” He looked around. “I suppose that if we have a traitor at this point, we’re fucked anyway.”

The men and women of the Order flinched at his bad language. Amicia thought how like a small boy he sometimes was.

“First, we have Gelfred’s men all across the countryside,” he said slowly. “Because of them, and their chain of messengers, we have collected the men of the Order and Master Pye’s convoy and all the Occitans who escaped from their camp. That will give us two hundred lances and a solid body of infantry. Not, I confess, enough to face the royal army in the field, if it comes to that. But a potent threat nonetheless, and all of them will converge on Lorica tomorrow morning to cover our retreat.” He smiled at the Prior. “If you agree, of course, my lord, and you, Prince Tancredo.”

“Well eno’ but they won’t cover the tourney field.” Tom was flicking at some black skin where the acid had bitten into his forearms while fighting the moths, using his eating knife to flick the scabs off the already healed flesh beneath.

“No, but your cousin Ranald will,” Ser Gabriel said.

All around the table men turned and commented, or grunted. “Ranald knows the palace and the King’s Guard like the back of his hand, and he’s had four weeks to build-and half of the red banda is with him.”

Tom grinned. “I like that,” he said. “Oh, aye. I like that.”

Ser Gabriel bowed like a small boy at school accepting a prize. “Why thank you, Ser Thomas.” He looked around. “I plan a few diversions as well.”

Amicia thought, He’s still not telling us anything. She leaned forward, greatly daring.

“And you have a plan,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

Ser Gabriel nodded at her. “I do have a plan. Our greatest ally will be surprise. With my knights, we ride in. I show the Queen’s guerdon and offer to fight de Vrailly. We browbeat them into fighting-I think questioning de Vrailly’s courage ought to get him moving faster than his councillors can stop him. I beat him-and we win.” He smiled. “I think the Galles will be done as soon as de Vrailly’s arse hits the dirt. If the Queen is proven guiltless-”

Prior Wishart shook his head. “I fear you are oversimplifying, my son. The archbishop-I know him, and his type. He will stop at nothing to make sure you are defeated. He will cheat.”

The Red Knight grinned his smug grin. “That’s just it,” he said. “De Vrailly won’t cheat. I don’t think he can.”

Amicia spoke up. “I want to try for the King,” she said.

There was silence.

“I think I am the ablest healer in this gathering,” she said. “If the King has an affliction-”

“Or a curse, or an ensorcelment-” Ser Gabriel said. He nodded at her like one conspirator to another.

“Sister Amicia is subject to arrest at any moment,” Prior Wishart said. “And if caught, she can be burned.”

Amicia shivered. But she squared her shoulders. “I’ll dress as a maid,” she said. “In a kirtle with flowers in my hair, I doubt anyone will take me for a nun.” Her eyes bored into Gabriel’s. “Please, gentles, no false gallantry.”

“I wonder how close you can get to the King,” Ser Gabriel said.

There was a silence, and Prior Wishart shook his head. “The guards would never let her close enough,” he said. He turned to glare at the Red Knight, and noted that at some point Sister Amicia had left her chair.

In fact, she was standing at his elbow.

“You learned that from me!” Ser Gabriel spat.

“Yes,” Amicia said.

Most of the people present laughed.

The Red Knight went on to lay out his plan in what detail he had. Neither the knights of the Order nor the Occitans were pleased to be relegated to forming the rearguard.

Ser Gabriel was adamant. “If you ride openly into the lists with us, we’ll be law-breakers,” he said.

Bad Tom grinned. “Laddie, we’re all law-breakers. Eh? Not lambs. What if they just take us? A hundred crossbows and we’re done-all our steel won’t avail us aught.”

Gabriel frowned, and his mouth twitched sideways, as it did when he felt he was being hounded. “We’ll make something up,” he said. “I agree with the Prior and Sister Amicia that the Galles have more hermetical power than they are showing-but enough to face me? And Amicia?” He smiled at her.

She frowned.

“And if they try to arrest you, then there’s civil war,” she said.

“We will fight our way out. And take the Queen with us,” he said.

She nodded. “But I’ve heard that civil war is what the Galles want. So why not take you all the moment you show yourselves?”

Tom laughed. “She’s got you there,” he said.

Ser Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “De Vrailly can’t allow it,” he said.

“What if he’s just a figurehead?” the Prior asked.

“No one has told him, if that’s the case,” Ser Gabriel said. “I maintain that if we move quickly, we can sweep them up into a duel.”

Heads nodded.

Bad Tom sat back, sheathed his big dirk with a click, and put his booted feet out. He steepled his hands.

“Can you take de Vrailly?” he asked bluntly.

Ser Gabriel shrugged. “Yes,” he said.

“You aren’t sure,” Tom said.

Gabriel met his eye. “No combat is that sure,” he admitted.

“So, you are a loon. We’re to ride into the lion’s den at your back and watch you win or lose, and then, if’n you win, we snatch the Queen before the King changes his mind and we ride free to Lorica. Mind ye, if you lose or they decide to cheat or arrest ye, then we’re all taken and die horribly on the rack, or being ripped apart by horses. Have I covered yer plan?” He flicked his chin in an offensive Hill gesture. “It’s not yer best plan.”

“Do you have a better?” Gabriel spat back. He did not like to be questioned. “Perhaps you can lead us in and out.”

“When do I get to sell my beasties?” Tom asked.

“At Lorica,” Gabriel said.

“Going to cover me for three days while I hold a market?” Tom asked.

“If I have to,” Ser Gabriel said.

He and Bad Tom locked eyes. “It’s over-bold even for me,” Tom said.

Ser Gabriel looked around. “I agree. It’s a crap plan. It is all I have, made with clay and straw. Because what we ought to do is retreat to Albinkirk, let the Galles kill the Queen, and raise our own army. We ought to, but that would play directly into the Galles’ hands and my beloved mother’s. If we pull this off instead, we can save a generation from war. And that, gentlemen, is our duty as knights.”

“You are a pitiful excuse for a sell-sword,” Bad Tom said. “I’ll send to Donald Dhu to start selling now. We’ll gain a day or two.”

“You’re in?” Ser Gabriel said.

“Oh, aye,” Tom said. “I’d follow ye anywhere-if only to find out where y’re goin’.”

The knights pushed back their chairs. But the Red Knight’s brother put a hand on the table by his brother.

“I’m the best lance,” he said.

All conversation stopped.

“I’ve beaten you since we were boys, and I beat you at Christmas,” Ser Gavin said.

Ser Gabriel turned and smiled at his brother. “It’s true, brother,” he said.

“I’ve sworn to kill him,” Gavin said.

Ser Gabriel nodded. “The Queen asked me,” he said.

Gavin’s face grew red, and then white. “So you’ll say me nay?” he hissed.

Ser Gabriel shook his head. “Gavin, we’ll be lucky if we get to fight their champion. Anything that raises the odds of the fight helps us. I have the Queen’s note and guerdon. They almost have to let me fight. Not you.”

“Fine-then I’ll wear your colours and keep my visor shut. You’re being greedy, brother. It always has to be you. I say: let me do it. And I say: no power on earth will keep me from putting de Vrailly in the dirt.”

“It’s not a power on earth that I’m worried about,” Ser Gabriel said. “I have to do this.”

Gavin slammed his fist on the table, took Gabriel’s silver cup, crushed it in his fist and hurled it across the room. Then he stalked out, his sabatons ringing on the stone floor.

Bad Tom watched him go, and then put a meaty hand on the Red Knight’s armoured shoulder. “He’s better than you,” he said.

Ser Gabriel’s face hardened.