Excuses tumbled through his mind, but he knew it was too late for excuses. He stubbed his toe on the leg of the camp bed and managed not to make a noise. Mikeli stood aside to let him out and then dropped the curtain behind him. Then he felt Mikeli’s hand—a man’s hand, larger than his own, harder-callused, stronger—on his arm, moving him into Mikeli’s side of the tent.

As his eyes adjusted to the fainter light of the real candle, he could see Mikeli’s camp bed, the camp chair with its leather seat and back, the table with folding legs, the footstool.

“Sit there,” Mikeli said, pushing him toward the stool.

Camwyn folded himself onto it. The candle flame fluttered as Mikeli dropped the curtain to the passage and then sat in the chair. It should have been ludicrous, Camwyn thought, a king in his nightshirt, bare legged and barefoot … but there was nothing amusing about Mikeli’s expression.

Mikeli leaned forward, putting his face a mere handspan from Camwyn’s. “And just when, Brother, were you planning to tell me about that?”

No use to pretend he didn’t know what “that” was.

“And do not try to tell me this was the first time.”

Camwyn had already rejected that excuse. “I hoped it would go away,” he said instead. “I asked Gird to stop it. I knew it was wrong—”

“You weren’t trying to make it happen? Wanting to know if you had magery like Beclan?”

“No! I wasn’t … but … I dreamed.”

“Dreamed?”

“Voices. And—maybe it was my fault.”

“How?”

Camwyn’s voice seemed stuck in his throat, but he got it out bit by bit.

“The crown called you?” Mikeli’s face, in the dimmer light of the flickering candle, had seemed slightly less frightening, but now it hardened again. “Was that why you asked to see the treasury? Were you lying to your tutors and the steward as well as me?”

“I wanted to see if I could … find it. I never saw the chest before; I didn’t know what it looked like. If I could find it, then … then maybe I could open it. It wants to be free, Mikeli—sir king.” He knew he was crying only when the tears dripped down his face.

“And you blame the crown?”

“No—not that—it’s my fault. I could have—could have stopped—”

“Did you break into the treasury?”

“No!”

“Softly. Were you thinking about breaking into the treasury? Was that why you went up on the roof?”

“Yes, sir king.”

“Does anyone else know about this? Aris?”

He saw now, when he knew he should have seen earlier, that truth was the only road open. “Yes, sir king. When we went out on the north roof—”

“The time you fell.”

“I … caught Aris. And I couldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”