Tavi put a hand on the centurion’s shoulder. “Follow orders, soldier. They’ll follow theirs. And if we’re smart and lucky, maybe we’ll all get to cut one another’s throats next year.”

Ramus frowned. He began to turn, and hesitated. “You... you really think that, son? Er, sir?”

“No two ways about it. They’re in the same corner we are. And there’s some of them I’d sooner trust at my back than a lot of Alerans I’ve known.”

Ramus snorted. “Ain’t that the crowbegotten truth.” He squared his shoulders and slammed a fist to his chest. “I’ll take word to my lord Vanorius, sir.”

“Good man,” Tavi said. He drew the dagger from the centurion’s belt, turned, and speared what remained of his roast onto the end of it. Then he passed the knife back to the man. “For the ride back. No sense in letting it go to waste. Good luck to you, centurion.”

Ramus took the dagger back with a small, quick grin. “Thank you, Your High—”

A wind suddenly screamed down out of the north, a wall of cold air thirty degrees colder than the still-chilly northern night. One moment, the night was quiet, and the next the wind threatened to rip the pavilion from the ground.

“Bloody crows,” Ramus cried, lifting a hand to shield his face. Whipped by the wind, the sea below almost seemed to moan protest as its surface was lashed into a fine spray. “What’s this?”

Tavi lifted his own hand and faced north, peering at the sky. Clouds were being swallowed by a grey darkness spreading from north to south. “Well,” he said, baring his teeth in a snarling smile, “it’s about bloody time.”

He put a hand to his mouth and used a couple of fingers to let loose a whistle piercing enough to carry even over the sudden roar of cold wind, a trick his uncle Bernard had taught him while shepherding. He made a quick signal to the line of guards, who gathered in on him with alacrity.

“That’s enough vacation, boys,” he said. “Break out your extra cloaks. It’s time for us to save the Realm.”

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 14

Valiar Marcus became aware that he was being stalked before he’d passed the fourth row of Legion tents in the first quadrant of the First Aleran’s camp. At night, the silent rows of bleached, travel-stained canvas were silent except for the occasional snore. Walking among them could be an eerie experience, like walking in a graveyard, the tents falsely aglow with the light reflected from the standard-issue bleached canvas. It was not easy to slip through a Legion’s grid of white tents without presenting a conspicuous dark profile against the fabric—which was by and large the reason every Legion used white canvas in the first place. But it could be done by one patient and skilled enough.