Saw every man who’d ever unhorsed him. Relived every painful fall, every bruise, every humiliation as the quintain slapped him, as his lance missed its mark, as he caught a foot in the stirrup going down—a long, long, silly fall, and all his brothers laughing, his master-at-arms laughing, even Pru, her apron covering her face.

Ah, yes, he thought. They were not doubts, but the sordid realities of a hundred failures—some real, some fancied. As a magister, he knew that the line between them was very thin indeed.

Mater is dead. Odd—a piercing sorrow he never expected, and a vast tide of shameful relief. Whatever happened in the next ten heartbeats, neither the Earl of Westwall nor the duchess would ever mention it, being dead.

He dropped his lance from erect to the lance rest under his right arm without any sense of volition.

He refused to enter his palace. In the strange labyrinth that was his idea of chivalry, to calm himself artificially in his palace in this one fight would be to cheat.

And because all the flaws in the dragon’s breath, when forged by a master, make a stronger blade. All the flaws.

I will go down clean. This is who I am.

Eye.

Lance point.

Target.

Michael was a bowshot away. He could not breathe.

Neither adversary saluted. There was no flourish. They went at each other with a simple intensity of purpose.

To a veteran jouster, the open field, lack of barriers, and slight unevenness of the ground offered an endless subject for doubt.

Both horses went straight forward, perfectly in hand, perfectly balanced, their riders like statues in their saddles, tall and strong.

As the two came together, it seemed to Michael, watching, that both horses stepped offline. His pulse pounded in his throat, his dry mouth—he was clutching his saddle—

The sound carried after the impact was visible.

Both lances shattered, and both men rocked back. De Vrailly’s head seemed to snap back, and Gabriel’s body twisted badly, the shards of their lances falling like red and blue hail. But both horses had done what they’d been trained to—an oblique step at the moment of contact—and because there was no barrier, the two great chargers collided, breast to breast.

They rose, front hooves flailing, rearing as if neither monster had two hundred pounds and more of steel-clad man on their backs. They rose like fighting cocks, and iron-shod hooves flew like arrows on a stricken field—so fast, so many blows struck, that no watcher could even follow the course of the horse-fight.

De Vrailly’s horse came down first, and in that beat of a heart, Ataelus landed two great blows—left, right.