It was twelve days until the gates would open, and Gabriel was suddenly awake, his brain busy. His first thought was that he was just forty leagues from Blanche, and he wondered what she might be doing, and with an awkward grunt, he threw his cloak over his squire and page, who were both sound asleep. He lay for a moment with his back hurting, and he flexed, first his silver hand, which caused him no pain at all, and then his flesh hand, which ached from old injuries and because he’d slept on it. His hips hurt, his shoulders hurt, and he lay thinking about people dying.

Sometime in the night he’d rolled off the pile of cut ferns provided for the emperor’s “comfort” and he got slowly to his feet and shook his head, shivering from the cold. He crept away, feeling three times as old as he really was.

But his rising woke Anne, and she leapt into action, fetching a copper pot, boiling water at a campfire, and making a tea from spruce tips as her mother had taught her. She added his usual dollop of honey and put the cup in his hand just as Francis Atcourt limped to the command fire with a black-and-white bird on his arm and a leather folder. Anne knew that this was an important time; she slipped away to see to Ataelus.

Gabriel took the tea, sipped it, and took the scroll from the small tube on the great bird’s left leg. The bird grabbed his thumb as if it was a perch and pierced his chamois gloves.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Is this the famous E.34?” he asked.

“The very same,” Atcourt said with pleasure.

Gabriel patted her plumage and kissed the top of her head. “You probably saved us all, sweeting,” he said. E.34 had been the first messenger bird to survive the trip into Arles and out again, bringing them word that the citadel on the mountain was still holding. He held her on one hand while he opened the scroll with the other and he smiled. It was in Blanche’s own hand, the ink scarcely dry; she had been awake earlier than he.

Convoy 4 is in. Sauce is moving north; her cavalry may reach the San Colombo today. Clarissa has the harvest rolling in; we went to the fields ourselves yestereven and I’m tired. E.16 reports a terrible attack on Havre, with heavy losses in shipping; “sea monsters” blamed. I have sent Ser George south with a convoy of Etruscan refugees. All is well here. When will you come?

The word back was lined through and made him smile. So did the somewhat scattershot order of the information. On the other hand . . .