Dorrin sat on the bed, thinking. Worrying. Thinking how long it had been since she prayed to Falk in anything but a crisis. For the king’s life, she had prayed. For Paks’s safe return from torment, she had prayed. But though she wore the ruby, it had been years since she prayed for guidance, for Falk’s Will to be clear to her. She had substituted, she realized, Phelan’s orders, Phelan’s well-being, for the will of the gods, though she held herself true to them as she understood them.

As she had understood them as a runaway, as a young woman.

Time to do more than that. Time to do better, to outgrow her role as Phelan’s captain, as Paks had long outgrown hers as Phelan’s soldier.

By the time Paks reappeared with the Knight-Commander of Falk—who looked decidedly grumpy at being dragged up flights of back stairs with little explanation—she had prayed for aid and guidance and felt, for the first time in years, connected once more to Falk’s Company.

“Captain Dorrin!” the Knight-Commander said. “So it is you I have come to see—Paksenarrion here would not say.”

Dorrin had risen; Paks, vanishing from behind him in the doorway, reappeared with a chair. “Here, sir—if you will take a seat—”

“Hmph.” He sat, still staring at Dorrin, frowning.

Paks moved past him and sat cross-legged on the bed opposite Dorrin. “If I may, Captain, I’ll explain—”

Dorrin nodded, and Paks began. “You have heard, sir, that Captain Dorrin has been appointed by the prince and Council in Tsaia to take over the dukedom of Verrakai?”

He glanced from one to the other. “No … I had not.”

“Well, then, she has. And the difficulty is, as I’m sure your predecessor told you, that the Verrakai retain the old magery—the outlaw magery—and misuse it to maintain their rule. And she herself inherited that ability.”

He nodded, now staring hard at Dorrin. “So my predecessor told me, when he was old and ill. She had it, but had refused to use it cruelly, and thus had left Verrakai for Lyonya and our Hall. I was surprised he accepted her—you.”

“Did he tell you everything?” Dorrin asked. “That I came under a false name, that my family pursued and demanded my return, that he protected me from them?”

“Not that you came under a false name, no. I would not have let you stay, had you done that to me.”

“I understand, sir,” Dorrin said. “But it was his decision at the time.”

“He was an interesting man,” the Knight-Commander said. “And he felt strongly about you. He was glad to see you linked to Phelan—he felt you had an important role to play there.”

“I did?” Dorrin felt only surprise. “He never told me.”

“He wouldn’t. But on the road from Tsaia, was it not your cohort who defended the king long enough to save him from attack—including by your relatives?”

“Yes, but—”

“So what, now, is your need? I’m assuming your need, since this paladin brought me here speaking of great need.”