“Yes, Your Grace. Still … if you think her a risk, why leave alive the old man?”

“He is too weak and ignorant to threaten us. He’ll serve us by diverting suspicion. No doubt her death was more merciful than his will be.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Do not douse the sleeping fire until the lights on the hill have vanished. Do as you have been instructed. Let no one chance upon you in the tombs. All depends on timing and where you place the decoy.”

“I will not fail you, Lord Hugh.”

“I trust not. Afterward, await my return.”

“Yes, Lord Hugh. God go with you, Lord Hugh.”

The angel’s smile had something of irony in it. “So we may hope.”

He beckoned. A soldier took Blessing out of Anna’s arms and lifted her up to one of his companions, already mounted. Another took Anna up behind him. The rest made ready, and they rode out of the palace by the spies’ gate, a triple-guarded gate set into the palace’s outer wall that led to an escarpment and a steep trail carved into the northeastern face of the hill on which the town of Novomo had been built. Shale littered the hillside. They picked their way down. None spoke; only the rattle of rock broke the silence.

How far did the spell extend? Had he cast his web of sorcery across the entire town?

How could any person be so beautiful and so wicked?

At the base of the hill they stopped beside a vineyard, which lay quiet under the late afternoon sky. Nothing stirred except a single honeybee, searching for nectar.

“Brother Heribert,” said Lord Hugh. “Take such provisions as you can carry. Walk north, over St. Barnaria’s Pass. Do you know the way?”

“The way we walked when we came south?”

“Rumor has it you came down from the mountains. Return there, and follow the path north into Wendar.”

“Who will guide me?”

“You must guide yourself. You seek Sanglant, who calls himself regnant. When last I saw him, he was at Quedlinhame. Seek him, and do what you must.”

Without answering, the cleric collected a sack of provisions offered to him by one of the soldiers. He paused beside Blessing’s limp body to touch her knee, then went on his way through the vineyards, soon lost to view. The rest circled south to join the main road leading out of town. Twice Anna saw folk in the distance, laborers or farmers about their tasks. Once she saw a wagon at rest behind a tree, but she saw no sign of its occupant, only a mule with its head down, cropping grass. Twice she heard a dog bark. A large party had passed this way before them; she saw their dust ahead on the road, moving south.

As dusk lowered, they paused beside a chalky path that split off from the main road and climbed a nearby hill. Here they paused.

“Two riding up behind,” said the guardsman who rode as rear guard. “That’ll be Liudbold and Theodore. They’re late coming.”