Calenne grimaced. She’d spent a lifetime dreaming herself free of Katya’s legacy. She’d not backtrack now it was finally within her grasp. The Southshires hadn’t needed her the whole time she’d been a prisoner at Branghall. It’d manage without her now.

“So you’re a hopeless romantic,” she said. “I’d never have guessed.”

“Yeah, shines through all the time. Ask anyone. Why are you here?”

A good question. Why was she still in Eskavord? Viktor’s concerns for her safety aside, there was nothing stopping her riding for Thrakkia. She could leave whenever she wanted, so why hadn’t she? Belatedly, she realised that Kurkas’ concerns were a mite more focused.

“I’m looking for Viktor.”

“’Course you are. Charms ’em wherever he goes.”

“He does?” Calenne hated the involuntary note of alarm.

“Don’t fret yourself.” He grinned wolfishly. “He has a way of talking folk ’round, that’s all. Why do you think I’m here in the path of Hadari spears instead of sitting safe at his father’s gate? Then again, there was this one lass up by the Ravonn – a reeve’s daughter, she was – went to great lengths to get his attention. The kind of carry-on you don’t want the neighbours to see. Barking up the wrong tree, she was. Nothing to offer him.”

“He’s not interested in women?”

“Not interested in anyone, not that I’ve seen. No flags flying on those battlements, if you take my meaning.” Kurkas straightened. “Come on, I’ll take you to Viktor.”

They threaded the muster fields towards the handful of pavilion tents. Calenne gave wide berth to the gold-robed proctors, lest they marked the presence of nearby simarka.

Now closer to the troops, she saw what Kurkas meant. Most were lads and lasses with barely sixteen years behind them. Those who remained fell on the spectrum’s distant end. Men and women who’d been in their prime at Zanya, but on whom the passing years had levied a great toll. Only those in the black cloth and silver swan of the Akadra hearthguard truly resembled soldiers as Calenne imagined them. They made up perhaps a third of those assembled.

They found Viktor outside the largest tent, stripped to shirtsleeves and britches. He glowered at an unfortunate young man in a herald’s tabard.

“I didn’t ask why the Rivelan garrison isn’t here,” he growled. “I ordered you to impress the need for haste upon Lieutenant Garran. Will you do this for me, or must I do it myself?”

The herald blanched, saluted and scurried away. Viktor spun on his heel. Calenne glimpsed an expression that matched the Black Knight of her nightmares far better than the man she’d known over the last few days. As he caught sight of her, his expression cleared.

“Ah, Calenne. I was about to send for you.”

Kurkas, now standing to Viktor’s rear, winced.