“Arvid—stop for a little. I must eat with a group of tedious High Marshals, and I cannot—I apologize—ask you to sit with us. But you and young Arvid are welcome to eat in the common hall, and I promise I will come to you after, and you may tell me more.” She handed him a folded cloth.

Arvid realized that tears had wet his face. “Where—where is that?”

“The kitchens, where you were before. Come, I’ll take you. There’s a fountain in the small garden on the way where you can cool your face and wash your hands.”

It was long after nightfall when the Marshal-General returned; young Arvid had given up yawning and now slept, slumped against Arvid and the wall behind him. “Would you rather wait until the lad’s had a night’s sleep?”

“It might be better,” Arvid said. “We’re to come in the morning and help with mucking out.”

“I’ll have someone light your way.” She called one of the kitchen workers, who seemed quite willing to take a torch and light their way to the inn; young Arvid scarcely roused as Arvid carried him.

In the brighter light and the noise of the common room, the boy’s eyes flickered open. “Time for bed,” Arvid said, setting him down. “I hope you can climb the stairs on your own; I’d hate to stumble with you.”

Next morning, after a hearty breakfast—Pia was a better cook than those up the hill, Arvid decided—they walked up the hill and joined Helfran in mucking out the paddocks. They had worked scarcely a half-turn of the glass when the Marshal-General appeared. “I’m sorry Helfran,” she said, “but I must take Arvid away; he has information I need.” She turned to young Arvid. “Are you willing to stay with Helfran?”

“Yes, Marshal-General,” he said.

“Make sure he has a honey-cake at midmorning,” she said to Helfran. “Lad’s been on the road a long time, and he’s thin.”

“ ’Course I will,” Helfran said. “Come along, lad, and I’ll show you how to harness a pony to th’ cart—we’ll need to haul all this out to the meadow.”

Arvid followed the Marshal-General back through the stables and then through a maze of passages he hadn’t been in before, until they came to the kitchens and from there up the stairs to her office.

“Sit there,” she said, pointing to a chair padded in leather near the window. She settled herself behind a wide table and set her elbows on it. “Start from where you were: you were taking vengeance on the Valdaire Guildmaster—”

That seemed a lifetime away. Arvid took a breath and began. Gird’s light in the grange, in his hand. Gird’s voice telling him to save the child. More and more often, that voice, prodding, taunting, pushing him to do what he had not ever thought of doing.