“So we come around again to my first question: what do you want?”

“Who is Liath’s father?”

“Bernard.”

“And her mother?”

“A daimone of the upper spheres. I am surprised to hear you ask.”

“It was once a closely guarded secret.”

“Yes, once it was. Back when we still held some measure of control over her. Anne took you into the Seven Sleepers. I am not surprised that you lived, when others died, but I am surprised you ask me questions you must already have heard the answers to.”

“Folk may lie.”

“I am shocked to hear it.”

Lord Hugh chuckled. “Is it safe to let you live, Eagle?”

“Oh, indeed it is. I would even call it necessary.”

“Think you so?”

“Of course I must. Leave us be, Lord Hugh. We have nothing you want.”

“No, no,” said the other man musingly. “I’m not sure you do have anything I want.”

She felt warm breath on her neck and heard the merest croak of the step just above the one she stood on, where it had a wobble.

“Hsst!” said the sergeant in her ear. “Up out of here, girl, or we’ll all be in trouble.”

They fled up, and just in time, for the sergeant had just shoved her out the door and over to the pits to pretend she was at some kind of filthy work with her head bent down to hide her face when she heard all the soldiers with bowing and scraping in their voices as some august presence departed the tower and went on his way.

“Idiot,” said the sergeant, coming over to her and yanking the pail out of her hand. “No one was to disturb them! I’ll take care of the prisoner today. You go back up, and keep your mouth shut and your feet where they belong.”

“How was I to know?” she said, and he slapped her.

Later, as the cloistered hours passed without incident, the sergeant relented and came up himself to gossip with Lord Berthold, his favorite. The queen’s younger daughter had died the day before, which explained the tolling of the bell. There was anyway to be a feast that night, if a solemn one, because an envoy had come from a distant land, but he wasn’t sure where, maybe Arethousa, come to parley with the grieving queen. So that was why it was that Berthold and his retinue could not leave the upper chambers for any possible reason this day.

Therefore they expected no visitors late in that afternoon with the courtyard gone quiet and a murmur rising from the great hall whose roof could be seen from the east facing windows. There, most of those who lived in the palace had gathered to feast or to serve. The smells rising from the kitchens made Anna’s stomach hurt and her mouth water.

Berthold and Elene played another game of chess by the window, glancing at each other in a way that Anna recognized as dangerous and that, mercifully, Blessing did not see for what it was. Two attractive young people thrown together for hours and days and weeks on end. How well Anna knew where such intimacy led! She wiped her eyes, but there weren’t any tears left for Thiemo and Matto. They had vanished under the hill with Berthold’s companions, with their old life, with all that had transpired before the storm.