Alard had loved flowers, the more resplendent, the better. So Marit was startled to see that his carefully nurtured beds of azaleas and peonies and heaven-full-of-stars had been replanted into ranks of practical herbs, as though the cook and the infirmarian had snuck in when the old man wasn’t looking.

She climbed the steps to the roofed porch, where she paused, listening to the shush of a broom around the corner in a steady accompaniment to voices murmuring beyond the closed doors. Ladiya appeared butt-first, attention focused on lines of dirt forming ranks along the boards.

“Can I go in?” Marit asked.

The old woman still had her back to Marit and did not answer. She tilted her head to one side until it rested against the thin wall. Eavesdropping.

As the voices from inside were raised, it was impossible not to overhear.

“You’ve been marshal for one month. I’m surprised you waited so long to get rid of me!”

To hear his voice, healthy and strong and angry, hurt like a dagger to the heart, but it was the pain of unlooked-for joy that brought tears to her eyes. He was still alive.

“Joss, you have the makings of a good reeve—of an excellent reeve, perhaps—but you are out of control.” The words were emphasized in a firm voice, entirely calm and utterly sincere. She knew that voice very well. It went on speaking, each word crisp as if with frustration hooded. “Still, with things the way they are, and the problems in Herelia, I can do nothing but send you to Clan Hall to get you out of my jesses. I will let the commander deal with you, thank the gods, so that I do not have to. I have enough to deal with here. If I could keep you belled I would, but I cannot. In the old days, so they say, a rogue and errant reeve was subject to execution for the kind of insubordination we have seen from you, the repeated breaking of the law, going time and again to Guardian altars despite knowing that it is absolutely out of bounds, despite knowing what happened the first time you did it. But we do not have the luxury now of punishing you in that way. The gods know we need you, and especially we need Scar. So I am sending you to Clan Hall and that is final. You leave today.”

The last word rang. Afterward, there came a pause. Marit braced herself for the storm.

Instead of an answer, one of the doors was slammed open and Joss—as handsome as ever!—charged with all his loose-limbed passionate grace out of the chamber and past Marit without giving her a glance.

“Joss,” she said. “Sweetheart.”

He was already gone.

Ladiya turned around as a reeve whose short hair was laced with silver walked onto the porch in Joss’s wake.

“Did you overhear all that?” he asked without a sliver of amusement, but he wasn’t angry either. Masar was the most upright, bland, and humorless person Marit had ever known, and she had known him pretty well, having taken him as a lover for half a year when she was a lot younger. He’d been as humorless in bed as out of it, and he’d accepted her departure from the affair with a straight face and never in the years after showed the slightest sign that he resented her or, for that matter, pined after her. He was absolutely rock solid, a person who would back you up and risk his life to save yours and never ever cross the line past which proper behavior became improper.