Then Croy stopped perfectly still, crouched on the top riser of the stairs with the guard in his arms, and listened. The ringing helmet had made far more noise than he’d liked, and he needed to know if anyone had heard him.

He could hear the workmen outside grumbling about having to wait to offload their wares. He could hear horse hooves clopping on the flagstones of the courtyard. He could hear a guard atop the wall, hailing his fellow across the way, checking that all was well. He did not hear what he’d feared: no cry of alarm, no voice raised inside the palace to ask what that sound was. No one calling for the unconscious guard, to ask if something was the matter.

Very good. Getting the guard back down the stairs was not easy, but Croy had good muscle in his arms and a strong back. He shoved the guard into a verger’s room, then stripped him of his armor and tied his hands together behind his back. With a gag in the guard’s mouth, he thought he would be safe awhile. He threw his own cloak over the supine form of the guard for modesty’s sake, then pulled on the leather jack and put the helmet on his own head. He found the padded hood on the man’s belt and drew that on as well. It hid both his blond hair and his square chin.

Then he headed back to the second floor and straight to the door of Anselm Vry’s office. He raised the knuckles of one hand to knock, intending to announce that there was a message from the moothall and a reply was expected. That would get Vry to open the door with no fuss.

Yet just before he knocked he stopped and listened a moment—and heard a conversation beyond the door that grasped his attention.

“You must put it on. People expect to see you wearing the robe.” That was the voice of Anselm Vry, certainly.

Croy didn’t recognize the other voice. It was that of a grown man, but there was a childlike petulance to it—and at the same time a sort of hollowness, as if the owner of the voice was gravely ill, or, for that matter, ghostly.

“You can’t make me. You can’t make me do anything. I’m free of it!”

“If you won’t wear the robe,” Vry said, sounding exasperated, “you can’t appear in public at all. I’ll have you locked up in your room. And then we’ll see how free you are.”

“I’m free. I’m free! Every night, when they took it away—every night I dreamed. I dreamed of this! And in the morning when they brought it to me again, I wept. You won’t—you won’t bring it back, will you? Promise!”