“Oh, I’m sure my lord will come to you sooner,” Bel said. She had gathered up Arian’s clothes. “I’ll just take these downstairs to wash, and they’ll be ready for you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Arian said. Shadows dimmed the garden and orchard below; she could hear shrill voices in the house now. She relaxed, muscle by muscle, letting her taig-sense reach out to the orchard. Fruit trees, some espaliered on the walls, answered her touch. A few, at one end of the orchard, were unhappy about something else … she concentrated. Bones? Children’s bones? And something else—the roots were turning back from whatever it was.

A knock on her door; she pulled her attention. “Come in,” she said. The door opened, and the Duke stood there without her chain of office.

“If you’re rested, I thought you might give me what message you brought before dinner.”

“Certainly,” Arian said. The Duke sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. This close, Arian could see silver strands in her black hair. The ruby in her ear flashed red in the firelight.

“You look part-elven,” the Duke said.

“Half-elven, my lord,” Arian said. “My father was elven; my mother old-human, a farmer in western Lyonya, only two days from the border.”

“What news do you bring, then?”

“Six Verrakai trespassers attacked Lyonyan rangers; rangers killed them.” Arian repeated the descriptions. “They were buried with all their belongings, including horned chains.”

“That is good news,” the Duke said, “though it may shock you to hear me say it. They were under attainder. If I could put a name to them, I could tell the king they are dead. I’ve worried they might come back and cause trouble here.”

“Is that the last of them?”

“Almost certainly not.” The Duke sighed. “My relatives could transfer their own minds and souls into another’s body. The family rolls give some hint to the pretransfer identity of these, but I’m not sure they were ever all recorded. Most horribly, they killed children—sickened them to near death, and then forced themselves into the child’s body, dislodging the original spirit.”

“Falk’s Oath!” Arian said. She thought of the orchard. “Did you—are any such children buried in the orchard out there?”

“Yes. The first I found. You cannot imagine—or perhaps you can—how horrible it was to realize that these children were not children at all, but ancient evil souls in children’s bodies.”

“You killed them.”

“Yes.” The Duke’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I had to, to save the others. But it haunts me still.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for your news, Arian. At least there are six no longer a menace. Do you think I might gain permission to exhume the bodies and send proof to the king that they are dead, perhaps even identify them?”

“That I do not know,” Arian said. “I know which rangers buried them, though I did not visit the grave site myself. It is our custom, as perhaps you do not know, to leave bodies in the ground until Alyanya has taken their flesh to replenish the earth, and then raise the bones. I think you do not have the same rites—”