“You drank all the wine!” he said in mock annoyance. He had cried, then. Odd man. And now, like all men, sought to pretend he hadn’t.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“You tell that to all your boys,” he said.

She blushed, but it was dark. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” she said. “I should go look at the Queen. The wine was very good.”

“Your servant, Lady Blanche,” he said.

He rose—for a moment she thought he might…

Then he was past her, holding the door. “Since you tumbled the last bucket,” he said wryly, “I’ll draw another before I rest.”

He came back with the bucket, and with Nell, who had a straw palliasse over her arms and her boy in tow. The two of them made her a bed at the foot of the Queen’s. Nell looked well pleased—Blanche, in passing, plucked a straw out of her hair. Diccon, her young man, was diligent in avoiding his captain’s glance.

The Red Knight nodded, and went out the door.

Blanche fell onto her pallet and was asleep before she could think.

Gabriel fell into the straw next to his brother. Gavin muttered something. He’d been kind enough to leave room and two blankets. Gabriel refused to think about Ticondaga or all the errors he’d made—because if he stayed awake mourning, the morrow would be worse.

He closed his eyes. Smiled at a thought instead of weeping, and went into his palace of power. There—in the cold, clear world of the aethereal —he could work his own sleep.

“You need to sleep,” Pru said.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

He cast a simple working, using only two symbols and one statue. Pru’s hands moved, and he was asleep.

“Gabriel—they want you. Gabriel—get up!”

Gabriel surfaced slowly. His self-imposed working was strong enough to keep him down unless he made an effort of will. The effort of will broke the working, but it also brought him a flood of images.

“Ohh,” he said. He moaned. “Oh, noooooo.”

Mater, dead. Ticondaga—destroyed. Thorn, triumphant. The Queen. Amicia.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Sorry.” Gavin was shaking him. “It is Dan Favour, from Gelfred, and he says it has to be you.”

“Fuck,” he said again. He sat up. His eyes filled with tears and he banished them as best he could.

He rose from his blankets in shirt and hose and climbed over the rest of his lance and his casa sleeping in a small loft. Nell cursed him. Gavin had a taper lit and handed it to him.

“I’m going back to sleep,” he said.