De Rohan had accused the Queen of sorcery and infidelity. And died.

Why does my angel never name the Red Knight?

Why has he ceased to speak of God?

Why did he not give me any answers?

But the utmost thought in de Vrailly’s mind was one of mingled shame and apprehension, two thoughts which he seldom entertained. Because he had willingly donned the armour that had been tainted with sorcery, this day. He had other choices.

His lance went down into the rest with the ease of ten thousand repetitions.

He saw his opponent’s arms—the six-pointed stars on the brilliant scarlet ground.

I have other choices. I hate. I doubt.

Everything.

And then his lance was just there.

Gabriel sweated behind his visor. He watched de Vrailly with most of his attention. He tried to focus on the man’s movements, on his horse.

De Vrailly had a superb horse.

But behind the simplicity of preparation for combat was fear—the fear of death over all, and under that a layer of other fears like folded steel, each fear interwrapped with minute flaws and other hesitations like the dragon’s breath of a blade folded over and over again in the forge to try and hide the imperfections in the iron and the steel.

Fear for the Queen, and fear for Michael confronting his father, and fear for the world that he loved and fear that he had behaved badly, that he would die badly, that he would fail.

Gabriel Muriens usually entered combat, which he feared more than anything else in his life, borne along on the heady river of command. With no time to examine the reality of what he faced, he entered into combat like a black mirror—empty and yet full. His imagination rarely had time to inflate the bladder of his cowardice.

But today he had a long bowshot to cross on a horse he could not afford to tire early—a near eternity in which to think. To imagine. To wonder.

Gavin was the better jouster. But de Vrailly was now the commander of the army, and would not have accepted a lesser man or rank. And Gavin’s already gone west. In a day or two, he’ll find Mountjoy. I hope.

In his vivid and coloured fantasy, Gabriel saw himself unhorsed, saw de Vrailly’s lance smash through his breastplate to rip his intestines from his back—saw his helmet shred under a blow, saw Ataelus stumble and fall in the grass, saw Ataelus crash to earth under the hammer of de Vrailly’s deadly lance, saw the minute twist of his deadly hands as de Vrailly slapped his own lance to the ground and unhorsed him with delicate ease, saw the crashing mace blow that ended his life, saw de Vrailly chivalrously dismount to pound him to the earth with his sword—