“You need not,” Andressat began, but Halveric’s wife, entering at that moment, spoke out.

“Of course we must. You are our guest, and moreover a stranger from afar; even if you were not an old friend of Aliam’s, you must have the best we can offer and safe passage. If your courier has reached court, the king will probably have sent King’s Squires to lead you in.”

That seemed incredible. He was only a count; kings did not send escorts for mere counts. Not unless they wanted to imprison them … he shivered, remembering Alured’s threats.

“Are you all right?” Aliam’s wife asked.

“I’m fine,” Andressat said. She said nothing more, for which he was glad, soon leaving the room to do whatever women’s work she did. Aliam excused himself shortly after.

After dinner, when he returned to his room, twilight still lay on the fields. Andressat stood by the window, watching a line of cattle move across a pasture, heads nodding in rhythm; behind them a young person—boy or girl, he could not distinguish—swung a stick and whistled tunelessly.

A tap at the door caught his attention; he turned, expecting Aliam, but instead his wife stood there, hands folded over something hidden in her skirts.

“I have a favor to ask,” she said. “I apologize, as it is a favor with a sting to it.”

“Madam?” He could think of nothing else to say.

“You are going to see the king. You have a message for him; I have one as well … one that Aliam does not know about.” She looked at him, her face dim in the dying light. When he said nothing, she went on. “I can’t go,” Aliam’s wife said. “But you can carry this to the king.” She held up a folded sheet, wax-sealed.

Andressat blinked. Women of his family did not approach male guests and ask them to carry secret messages. It was … unseemly, except that Estil Halveric was clearly not attempting an assignation. She was a woman of power; he could feel that even as he thought how odd it was.

“Kieri’s his closest friend,” the woman went on. “Close as a brother. He needs to know that something’s wrong with Aliam—”

“But what can he do?” Andressat said. Immediately he realized how that must sound: he intended to ask the king to intervene in Aarenis, and she was merely asking the king to help a friend. And she was right; something was wrong with Aliam Halveric. Still, Andressat felt uneasy, alone with his host’s wife, despite the open door, the voices of others in the passage. And yet it was unthinkable that what he was thinking could ever be, with this woman, in this household. She was not like the women of the south, was the best way he could define it. His own wife would never have done such a thing, but his own wife never wore a servant’s apron, never made bread with her own hands, never—as he had seen this woman do earlier that day—taught a grandchild to milk a cow by milking it herself.