“Thank you, Marshal!” Flushed, but grinning, the lad unrolled his work cloth and set the drying inkstone in its box, the brushes and other scribe’s tools in their sleeves. Joss watched, caught between admiration and an intense relief that he himself need not be so tidy.

As soon as Udad clattered down the stairs, Siras said, “If you had him tending your sleeping chamber, it wouldn’t be such a wreck.”

“If I were another man, you’d be whipped for your impertinence.”

“As you say, Marshal.” He grinned without looking up from his work.

“What are you doing?”

Siras set the chisel aside and displayed the plank, salvaged from an outbuilding that had collapsed during Yordenas’s brief tenure as marshal. A row of flowers bloomed across the top of the wood.

“That’s quite good.”

Siras laughed. “Didn’t think I had any talents, did you? Both my mother and father are woodcarvers. That’s what I always thought I would do.”

“How did you get to Argent Hall?”

Siras gestured toward the men working through the herb bed, hands plucking and tossing the always verminous weeds. “Came to try my luck, same as many do. My clan didn’t want me to go, but my mother told them to let me try. Thought when I spent my months here and nothing came of it, I could come back to my true work.”

“A wise woman, your mother. Was she quite irritated it didn’t work out as she planned?”

Siras smiled, but instead of answering he swept up the bits and dust of wood and scattered this debris in the flower beds, to the laughing protests of the farm boys. A bell rang, signaling the end of drill.

“Bring tea, will you? The fawkners and trainers will be here shortly. And tell those lads they’re finished for the day.”

Siras tucked the chisel into his sleeve and the plank under his arm. Joss heard him exchange words with the youths outside, who—like the responsible farm lads they were—said they’d finish the one herb terrace they were on before they left it for the day, thank you.

Light shimmered on the flowers. A haze of aroma and color seemed to rise out of them, and out of that incandescent blaze might walk Marit, to chide him for his faults. The hells! Was that what he had reduced his memories of her into? A lilu who wished not to seduce his body but to improve his character? She hadn’t pinned him down that very first time, years ago, because she was interested in his character.

Fawkners and trainers arrived in a flood of chatter and complaints, with Volias slithering in their midst.

“Didn’t I tell you to return to Clan Hall with a report?” Joss asked, singling him out as everyone else settled on pillows and mats.

“Going at dawn tomorrow,” muttered Volias, his usual snarl subdued. “Just did another few sweeps looking for that cursed woman, Tumna’s reeve.”

Joss was so surprised to hear this that he answered as he might any other person. “She can’t have got far. I don’t believe she had any kin to turn to, or any place to go, really.”