I looked at Gremt. He was merely watching us. The slender vampire boy soprano had come up to stand beside him, eternal acolyte in a white lace surplice, and he held the boy around the waist as he’d held me moments ago.

I wanted to leave. It was time to leave. I knew that Magnus was weary to his heart, and he had had enough and so had I. And the silence of Amel was ominous and baffling. I found I was drained and sad and had nothing more to say just now to anyone.

I turned and took Magnus’s right hand and kissed it. Flesh. Anyone would have thought so. I don’t know that I’d ever kissed any being’s hand before, but I kissed his.

“Anon, I come to you,” he said under his breath. “Blessed heir.”

“Yes, Master, whenever you wish,” I said. I turned to Gremt and took Gremt’s hand. “And I’ll take my leave now and invite you to come whenever you wish to Court, you and all the household here.”

“Thank you,” Gremt said. “We’ll come soon enough, but remember my words. Remember: he is not what you think he is. He is more and less. And don’t be fooled by him.”

I nodded. I looked at the boy singer and tried to remember if I’d seen him before with Notker’s choir or musicians. Surely he had come from Notker’s lair in the Alps.

He had been thirteen or fourteen when he was made, before the manly changes came over him, a boy of curly dark hair and dark glowing eyes and skin almost the color of honey by lamplight. His face brightened.

“Yes, Prince,” he said. “I’ve sung for you and will sing for you again. It was Benedict who brought me to Notker, but your master who made me, and so I sing for him to bring him comfort.”

“Ah, I see,” I said. I repressed the simple urge to touch his hair affectionately. Against all evidence, he was hundreds of years old, a man in a boy’s body, and no more the boy than Armand was a boy, or I a young man of twenty.

Gremt followed me as I headed to the front doors, hastening to open them for me.

The cold night air felt good, and I saw the snow was falling thinly. The ground was freshly blanketed in whiteness. And beyond, the trees glistened as they moved in the soft bitter wind. Two dim figures waited for me.

“Goodbye, my friend,” I said. “Again, I came to break the silence between us. Come to me anytime, and I’ll be back when I can, if you’re willing.”

“Always,” he said. I saw the anguish in his face again, the strange grim unhappiness. “Oh, there’s so much I want to confide, but I cannot confide without confiding in the one I fear.”