“Ridiculous!”

“On that I agree. Young people that age easily develop hero-worship of an older, more striking relative, and given time and freedom, outgrow it. Aliam Halveric’s son Cal followed me around like a puppy when I was first a squire, but he had other models, and though we are friends now, it is no more than is proper. But still, when Ganlin also asked my help to escape the fate her father intended, and told me she, too, had been apprehended and forced to come to my court, I decided to help them.”

“By sending them to …” the king did not quite say “brothel” this time, but his eyes said it for him.

“By sending them, at my expense, where they wanted to go—to a knights’ training hall. I could have offered the choice of training with the Girdish, but Falk, I thought, would be more acceptable to you and to Ganlin’s father. I was wrong, but did not know it.”

“At your expense—you are not living off their pay?”

“Surely you have better spies than that!” Kieri let his anger show. “Falk’s Hall is not some Girdish grange welcoming any farmer’s brat who can pick up a hauk: the fees are high, and the students cared for as if they were the Knight-Commander’s own … within the limits of the training, which is long and difficult.”

“But they have both men and women there … it must be …”

“A place where well-born young men and women train to become honorable warriors, and some to become paladins.”

“Oh, paladins!” The king sniffed. “Troublemakers, those are.”

“Only for those desiring evil,” Kieri said. “Look here—I am willing to admit that your ways are different from ours, and that you may not intend evil, yet do things I think are wrong. But to sneer at paladins—”

“She says they are troublemakers,” the king said, making a hand-sign Kieri did not know.

“She?”

“You know. The Lady. The Weaver.”

Kieri’s blood ran cold. “You are not speaking of Alyanya the Lady of Peace or the Lady of the Ladysforest?”

The king looked blank. “I know neither of those ladies. I mean the true Lady, the Weaver, she who knows all secrets.”

That could mean only one being: Achrya, Webmistress, who had attacked Kieri and those he loved so many times.

“You mean Achrya,” he said.

The king made another gesture. “You must not say her name; she will be angry.”

“I will be angrier,” Kieri said. “Have you, then, been in league with her all these years? Was it you who connived at the death of my wife and my children, and yet you come complaining because I gave your daughter a chance at an honorable life?” Kieri felt his old rage rising within him, a white fire that yearned to consume the man who had killed Tammarion, their children, and yet would not have dirtied his own hands with the deed. “You made war on my children!” he said, knowing his voice hoarse with that rage.