“I won’t fail,” she said.

Prior Wishart nodded. “You are the best for the mission,” he said. “If they save the Queen—well and good. But if you can save the King…” He turned and spoke quietly. “Do not be afraid to take the King with you if you can, Amicia. Ser Ricar will be close to you at all times.”

“Does Gabriel know?” she asked.

Prior Wishart sighed. “No, lass. This is our own gambit. The Prince of Occitan and the Muriens have little time for our King. I cannot trust his fate entirely to your Ser Gabriel.”

She smiled. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

He nodded, reached up and gave her a blessing.

“Where’s the infidel knight?” she asked.

“Gone in the night,” Prior Wishart answered. He shrugged. “He’s no traitor, whatever his religion. I believe your Ser Gabriel sent him with a message.”

Amicia nodded, eyes narrowed. “To Harmodius. That’s who the black man is looking for—Harmodius. I don’t know why, but he and Ser Gabriel have some… link.”

Prior Wishart fingered his beard in the damp darkness. “Ahh,” he said. “I had almost forgotten Harmodius. He is alive?”

Amicia’s turn to ride out the gate had come. She found herself paired with Nell, who was looking at her impatiently. “It’s complicated,” she said. She waved, and then she and Nell were going side by side into the foggy darkness, black as pitch, beyond the gate. Her heart began to beat faster and faster.

She wished she might have spoken to Gabriel. She said a prayer for him, and for the fear he must feel.

The fog was still and cool, and they rode.

They rode for three hours. Every hour, the column halted for a few minutes—pages offered nose bags to horses, and water. At the third hour they came to an inn, and its gates were open and torches burned in the fog to guide them to water, a bite of fresh, warm bread and a cup of warm honey-mead in the dripping darkness. They halted for perhaps twenty minutes in the inn yard, and then rode out again—forty horses, twenty men and two women. She didn’t know where they were, but she suspected they were very close to Harndon. The countryside around them was waking up, cocks were crowing, and from the sounds, the Albin River had to be to her left and the bells were probably Harndon bells ringing across the river.

The fog grew lighter, but no less dense. Somewhere over her head, the sun was rising, but not a ray of it penetrated the dense grey cloud that clung to all of them like wet smoke.

Then, to her confusion, they were among trees—big, old trees, oaks and maples and another tall, magnificent type she did not know from the Adnacrags that grew as wide around as a peasant’s hut and so tall they vanished into the grey above.