“Your own?”

“I hope so. I told Arcolin to take a contract if he could—troops are expensive to keep idle—and at least one and maybe two cohorts of mine should be on the road to Aarenis right now. Besides, I would not bring my—my former—cohorts here except in an emergency. They’re not Lyonyan. They’re foreign, just like Golden Company or Clarts or any of them.”

They looked at one another, avoiding Sier Halveric’s gaze until he spoke. “It’s like a gift to my family,” he said. “Let me provision them—as a gift to the Crown.”

“That is generous indeed, Sier Halveric,” Kieri said. “But too much burden for one family. Suppose you half provision them, and let me know if you run short for your own people.”

“Thank you, Sir King. It will be an honor to serve the Crown.” Halveric looked around, challenging the others. One by one they assented to asking Aliam Halveric to hire out his company to the Crown, for use in the north.

“Sier Galvary, if you will draft a formal request from the Crown, I will sign it and it can be sent tomorrow.”

One by one the invited foreigners came to pay their respects before leaving; the lady of Pargun, uninvited, also came and made the briefest of farewells. Kieri interrupted Kirgan Marrakai’s obviously memorized speech to ask him about the night of the assassinations.

“I hear you were actually there, Juris. Dine with me, if you are not leaving until morning; this is something I should know.”

“If you will, Sir King.” The young man scowled briefly, then looked up. “It was a dirty business.”

Alone with the kirgan that evening at dinner, Kieri let the young man tell the tale as he would. Like most Marrakaien, Juris told a story well. Kieri could feel the prince’s shock at the news of Verrakai treachery, the young men’s eagerness to do something decisive, the older men’s steadying influence.

“They kept wanting us—Mikeli and me—to sit down, think things through. And we finally did. Roly had gone to bring maps so we could see where they might attack the palace. And then Verrakai came in—” Juris took a breath. “No one knew he could change appearance. I thought for a moment it was my father—and before I realized the truth, in that moment he had us all, silent and motionless as stones.” Another pause. “We could do nothing. We had to watch, Mikeli and I, while he took a sword out of the Knight-Commander’s rack and killed him where he sat, and then the Marshal-Judicar, and still we could not move. He told us he would kill Mikeli next, then me, and put the sword wet with Mikeli’s blood in my hand. If it hadn’t been for Roly—” He told the rest in a rush, down to the death of Verrakai’s brother in the stableyard. “I didn’t see that, but I heard.” He paused again. “It wasn’t anything like it is in the tales.”