“Oh, Desiderata,” he said, and she smiled at her name. “I cannot see being the Earl of Westwall. I think that must be for Gavin.”

“You are a strange man,” she said. “Why?”

The Red Knight frowned and made a face. “A long story. But if you know that the King was my father, you must know all you need to know. I will not pretend to be the Earl of Westwall. Gavin will be a better earl than I—he loves the people and the place and all the monsters there. I will be happy in Thrake.” He smiled a wan smile. “I think—that it is a little premature to think of all this, when the battles we have just fought are merely the prelude. The musicians are only warming up, and the dancers stretch their legs.”

Desiderata rocked her head from side to side. “Perhaps. But I think that ruling is always like this—it is always a terrible crisis of one sort or another. Bad rulers use these crises as excuses not to handle routine, and things decay. Under my hand, there will be no decay. I will build a rose garden that men will remember until the sun fails and the moon falls.”

“Madame, sometimes I fear that you sound like my mother,” he said. He winced, because in the change in his reins he’d just managed to hurt his hand. But then he smiled. “But in truth, she would have been a great queen—as you will be. I think you should be your own Regent, your grace.”

This was, perhaps, too much truth for the Queen of Alba, and she narrowed her eyes until she saw the blood dripping from his bandages and remembered that he had just given her back her kingdom.

In fact, he had two broken fingers and a deep cut across his hand that would probably maim him to some extent for the rest of his life, unless Amicia could work her miracles.

I put Jean de Vrailly in the dust.

My mother is dead.

Gabriel rode into the sunset, towards Lorica.

They made camp, having ridden forty miles in two days and fought a battle and lined up for a second. At the news that the Galles had dispersed, and that Gerald Random was marching on Harndon, Lorica opened its gates to the Queen with many an embarrassed flourish.

Blanche had the Queen’s new lodgings—the abbot’s guest chambers in the magnificent abbey of Saint Katherine of Tartary—swept and clean. She had a cradle for the babe and coverlets from Lorica’s many ladies and great bourgeois who were suddenly all too willing to play host to the Queen and her son, the King.