I told the big Tamerlain who sat rumbling on my feet. It bothered them when I talked to her, though, because they couldn’t see her.

“Gods take you, shut up,” said one. “Are we going to have to listen to this all the way to the Castle?”

Surprised, I looked up from the big animal stretched across the floor of the cart.

“Look at him,” he said to his comrade. “To smile like that with tears running down his face . . .”

“Relax,” grunted the other guard. “He’s been shut up in the Asylum for almost a week. He’s not used to the light, and his eyes are tearing up. It’ll go away soon.”

The Tamerlain sat up on her hindquarters and placed a forepaw on either side of me. The cart didn’t shift with her movements the way it did with mine—as if the Tamerlain had no weight at all.

“I’m sorry, Ward,” she said into my smile. “But it’s time.”

As she spoke, fire lit my blood and licked up my body, icy fire that burned impurities and nerves alike. Sweat poured from my skin and stung my eyes, mucus blocked my breath.

“Damn it, he’s having convulsions,” grumbled the second guard, though he made no move to come near me. “If the stupid mages did something to him that kills him—you and I know who’s going to get the blame.”

The worst of it was over by the time the horses stopped. I stumbled shakily out of the carriage to face a back entrance to the king’s palace, truly sober for the first time since I’d drunk from the general’s waterskin.

The guards hauled me unceremoniously up a narrow stairway and into a back room where a hot bath was waiting. They stripped my filthy clothes off and scrubbed me with rough cloths. Wrapped shivering in a bath sheet, I sat on a stool while one of them shaved me clean. There was some discussion about cutting my hair, but they decided it was a Shavig affectation, toweled it dry, and brushed it into a queue. The Tamerlain watched, unnoticed—Oreg could do the same thing. I took care not to look at her directly. And I smiled the whole while until my cheeks ached with the strain.

The clothes they gave me to wear were all black and plain, though expensive. The boots they pulled on my feet were my own, though they’d been polished to a higher gloss than I’d had them. They covered me with a hooded cloak and shuffled me out the door and into the hall. The hood kept me from seeing much about where I was going, but that was fine. It gave me more time to think. And I needed to think.

The king wanted me so he could work Farsonsbane. He wasn’t about to give me up.