“If you are asking me whether to be concerned, my lord, the answer must be yes. Of course you must be. Gird may be giving you warning, as well as your own senses. From my experience I would say that such actions as Duke Verrakai took are not taken lightly, or without deep planning; I doubt that his death and that of his brother end it. Your Order of Attainder is certainly necessary.”

“He held me motionless, Captain,” the prince said. “I cannot get over that. I thought Gird’s power was stronger than evil; I thought my faith was enough. This was not wizardry—this was the old magery that Gird once defeated, back again in today’s world.”

The prince looked angry; Arcolin knew that look. All the young squires looked that way the first time they were truly frightened.

“My lord prince,” he said, “I believe the gods are stronger than evil, but faith must marry with deeds. Gird had his cudgel, after all. Yeomen of the granges do not merely pray for faith, but train for deeds as well.”

The prince looked at him, almost indignant at first and then, his expression easing, rueful. “You are right, Captain. This was my first experience of violent death. I saw my uncle, whom I loved, killed before my face and could do nothing. And the Marshal-Judicar, as well.”

“Yet you lived, and killed the killer, did you not?”

“That was mostly Roly,” the prince said. “If he hadn’t come in and bashed Verrakai with a map rod and then stabbed him with a stone knife, I’d be dead. Neither my sword not Juris’s would bite, for Verrakai’s magery, until Roly’s old stone saveblade got him. Then the magery failed.”

Arcolin could imagine the three noble youths, trained in weaponry but inexperienced, against a man like Verrakai, whose own sword skill was well-known at court. And with magery as well—even if it proved wizard-work at the last—

“You did well,” he said, as he would have to a squire. “And I rejoice at your survival. Let me go to work now on a plan to present to your Council tomorrow.” He put aside any thought of visiting Kieri’s—and now his—banker that day.

“I nearly forgot,” the prince said. “There’s another of Phelan’s people—a councilor for one of his villages—who came south with him. A one-armed woman.”

“Kolya Ministiera, yes,” Arcolin said.

“She was staying in an inn, but for her safety I had her come to the palace—I’ll see she knows you’re here.”

By morning, Arcolin had a plan that—according to the palace clerks who had helped him—would fulfill the requirements of a grant-in-lieu-of-heir. They praised his foresight in bringing fair copies of the newly signed village charters. Kolya Ministiera signed the new Duke’s East charter and congratulated him on the grant, but they had little time to talk over what had happened. Though he’d had little sleep, Arcolin was awake when the seneschal asked if he would care to breakfast with the prince; they discussed his plan through breakfast and the prince nodded.