But no, that didn’t feel right. Two days since Josiri had burned his mother’s portrait. One day of ill-feeling and violence flaring like summer flash-fires. Another of aftermath, with towns and villages under curfew.

Revekah despaired of Josiri’s disrespectful act, but recognised that this was no consequence of that deed. There hadn’t been time for a summons, much less for a company of Tressian soldiers to have swift-marched the long roads through Tevar Flood.

Then there was the livery. A silver swan on black. Banners not seen in the Southshires in fifteen years. And at the column’s head, two men not easily forgotten. The first, a giant with a wicked scar on his cheek and a fennlander’s claymore across his back. The second man, older by a few years, lacked for a right eye, and most of his left arm. Revekah remembered the day he’d lost them. After all, she’d taken both.

Viktor Akadra and Vladama Kurkas. The first the champion of the Tressian Council. The other the dishevelled captain of the Akadra hearthguard.

No, she decided, this wasn’t retaliation. This was something else.

A new verse issued up from the road. The one in which the eponymous duke offered up his son to trickster Jack in exchange for an army of forest demons.

“Your hearth and home I will preserve, for an offering of kin.”

Revekah breathed the words in time with the soldiers. Funny. The last time she’d sung that song, she’d not understood how anyone – even a body so desperate as the embattled Duke of Kerval – could risk everything by courting so unreliable a presence as the Lord of Fellhallow. But that reserve belonged to a younger woman. The woman she was now would have embraced mischievous Jack, merciless Tzal – maybe even cursed Malatriant, Raven take her eyes – if it brought freedom.

“Who are they?” Tarn hissed, careful this time not to expose himself above the crest.

She regarded him in silence. Like so many wolf’s-heads, Tarn was young. Too young to remember Zanya, or the sacrifices of the past.

“Old ghosts.” Her eyes returned to the column of soldiers.

She hoped Josiri knew what he was doing.

Josiri returned to the balcony before noon. The ashes of the portrait were long gone from the terrace, swept away at Makrov’s order. His last such order before riding hard for the safety of Cragwatch. Beyond sullen Eskavord, ravens soared about fresh corpses on Gallows Hill. As much the price of insurrection as the kraikons standing silent in the streets, enforcing curfew.

Some Ascension this would be.

“Did I do right?” he asked softly.

Anastacia perched upon the balustrade. She once again wore the formal garb of a Trelan seneschal. Vapour curled from the toes of her boots as they swung back and forth. She took a last bite from her apple and tossed it away down the gardens.