“He’s awake,” Anne called from the solar. “Or what have you,” she added. Her sarcasm was in Sauce’s intonation, mostly because Anne Woodstock was sixteen and she all but worshipped the older woman and imitated almost everything she did. Or said.

They both grinned, and then Toby picked up the still-warm hippocras and pushed through the door into the bedroom with his hip against the heavy oak door.

“Good morning, Majesty,” he said without a trace of irony.

Gabriel stretched, found that his leather case with his linens was nowhere to hand, and casually stripped a silk veil off the bed-rail and passed it into the closed bed. “No towels for the emperor,” he said with mock severity.

Blanche stretched, took the veil, and snarled.

“That’s my silk veil,” she said. “I asked for a towel.”

“Good morning, Majesty,” Toby said, pushing through the door. “Hippocras is warm. Cider for Her Majesty is on the way.”

“Toby, we need a towel.” Gabriel shrugged.

Toby nodded. “Majesty, we need Master Nicodemus.” Master Nicodemus was Gabriel’s Morean steward, and he was with the army.

Gabriel nodded. “Right, and I didn’t list him. My apologies, Toby, you must be buried.”

Toby met his master’s eye. “Yes,” he said.

Gabriel bowed slightly. “Noted. Towel.”

Toby vanished.

“Damn,” Blanche said from the bed. “I forgot Nicodemus, too, when I read your list.”

Gabriel stood naked at the window, looking out over the sun-drenched fields and the thousands of near-starving wretches who had been rudely seized back from the Necromancer and inconveniently continued to need food. “Everything . . . every damned thing is going to depend on systems. I need people to wait on me efficiently so I can help make good decisions and make them stick. Toby needs to be knighted.”

“Kronmir,” Blanche said.

Gabriel went over, opened the bed, and leaned down to kiss her. “You are not just a pretty face.”

Toby leaned in and tossed a beautifully embroidered linen towel to the empress. He vanished.

“Absolutely, Toby must be knighted.” She laughed. “When?”

“This morning, after I bathe. No joke. The gates open, or whatever you want to call it, in twenty-five days. We don’t have time for ceremony.” He sighed.

“People like ceremony,” she said. She wondered if making love when you knew you were pregnant was a sin.

It didn’t seem like much of a sin compared to the world she lived in.

He paused and looked at her.

“Penny for your thoughts, miss?” he asked.

“What will the world be like, when this is over?” she asked.

The door opened again, and Anne Woodstock and Cully, the emperor’s personal archer, entered with a huge, steaming wooden tub of water.

“Majesty,” Anne said with a bow.

“Good morning, Anne.” Blanche put on her public face, which was already different from “Blanche, trustworthy maid of the queen” or “Blanche, mistress of laundry.” She almost never allowed herself any display but humour and helpfulness.