'Yes, yes!' Jezal snapped over his shoulder. 'Brimful!'

He burst out into a small courtyard, surrounded on three sides by a shadowy colonnade, and stood still in the cool evening. He shook himself, squeezed his eyes shut, let his head tip back and took a long, slow breath. A minute alone. He wondered if, aside from pissing or sleeping, it was the first he had been permitted since that day of madness in the Lords' Round.

He was the victim, or perhaps the beneficiary, of the most almighty blunder. Somehow, everyone had mistaken him for a king, when he was very clearly a selfish, clueless idiot who had scarcely in his life thought more than a day ahead. Every time someone called him, 'your Majesty' he felt more of a fraud, and with each moment that passed he was more guiltily surprised not to have been found out.

He wandered across the perfect lawn, giving vent to a long, self-pitying sigh. It caught in his throat. There was a Knight of the Body beside a doorway opposite, standing to attention so rigidly that Jezal had hardly noticed him. He cursed under his breath. Could he not be left alone for five minutes together? He frowned as he walked closer. The man seemed somehow familiar. A great big fellow with a shaved head and a noticeable lack of neck…

'Bremer dan Gorst!'

'Your Majesty,' said Gorst, his armour rattling as he clashed his meaty fist against his polished breastplate.

'It is a pleasure to see you!' Jezal had disliked the man from the first moment he had laid eyes on him, and being bludgeoned round a fencing circle by him, whether Jezal had won in the end or no, had not improved his opinion of the neckless brute. Now, however, anything resembling a familiar face was like a glass of water in the desert. Jezal actually found himself reaching out and squeezing the man's heavy hand as though they were old friends, and had to make himself let go of it.

'Your Majesty does me too much honour.'

'Please, you need not call me that! How did you come to be part of the household? I thought that you served with Lord Brock's guard?'

'That post did not suit me,' said Gorst in his strangely high, piping voice. 'I was lucky enough to find a place with the Knights of the Body some months ago, your Maj—' He cut himself off.

An idea slunk into Jezal's head. He looked over his shoulder, but there was no one else nearby. The garden was still as a graveyard, its shadowy arcades as quiet as crypts. 'Bremer… I may call you Bremer, may I?'

'I suppose that my king may call me whatever he wishes.'

'I wonder… could I ask you for a favour?'

Gorst blinked. 'Your Majesty has only to ask.'

Jezal spun around as he heard the door open. Gorst stepped out into the colonnade with the soft jingle of armour. A cloaked and hooded figure followed him, silently. The old excitement was still there as she pushed back her hood and a chink of light from a window above crept across the lower part of her face. He could see the bright curve of her cheek, one side of her mouth, the outline of a nostril, the gleam of her eyes in the shadows, and that was all.