“By Saint Katherine,” Anne went on. “Am I riding, too? I was just changing into girl’s clothes.”

“Change back,” Toby said heartlessly. “We’re riding in an hour.” He smiled. “Or stay here and serve Lady Blanche and Master Nicodemus.”

“No thanks,” she said.

“Want a clean shirt?” he asked, looking into his master’s armour basket to check on his maille.

“Yes,” Anne said.

Toby took one from his own pack and threw it over the door. “I won’t peek,” he said. He went on packing, his back to the door.

In a minute, she emerged in doublet and hose. “The clean shirt is everything,” Anne said. “I owe you—Sweet Christ, what’s that on your hips, you lout?”

Toby grinned. “A knight’s belt, sweeting,” he said with a bow.

She whistled. “He knighted you?” she said.

“You’re the squire now,” Toby said. “So you’re lucky I’m doing your work for you.”

Anne gave him a cautious hug.

“Your turn will come,” Toby said, trying not to relish a chaste hug too much.

Anne nodded, also trying not to relish the hug. She had the briefest notion of putting her lips on his, and dismissed it in despair.

Gabriel sat with Master Julius, and the orders rolled from his mouth through their pens and onto parchment. The stacks of orders sat in piles of scrolls like the skulls left by some conqueror.

Blanche sat in the corner with a six-fold wax tablet, prompting Gabriel.

“Venike rangers,” she said.

“Damn,” he said, and dictated an order—really a polite suggestion that the Venikans use their ranger corps or anyone else they could find to collect wandering farm animals taken by the Darkness and get them fed and watered.

“An incredibly difficult and inglorious job,” he said when he had finished dictating.

“Shall I put that in?” Master Julius asked.

Gabriel sighed. “But the world will not, I hope, end in twenty-two days,” he said. “So there must be food. In fact, we’ll need to ship food to Alba just to keep the Brogat fed. If the new Queen of Arles can save enough of our former not-dead, they can bring in the harvest and ship it.”

“So right now you’re stripping northern Etrusca to feed Arles,” his wife said.

“Exactly,” he answered. “If we fail, none of this matters. But we may as well plan to succeed.”

“Because you like to win,” she said seriously.

“Because we all like to win,” he said. “Especially when the alternative is personal extinction. Eh? Now, wagons. I need them all.”

“You are a fearsome tyrant,” Blanche said.

“In this moment, what is needed is a tyrant,” Gabriel said. “Can someone take a note for Captain Parmenio? Venike? And a copy to the Doge? We’ll need every ship they can muster, and some covering warships, to move food. Parmenio will know the odds, and he probably knows more about fighting sea monsters now than anyone else.”

“Giselle will not appreciate being bypassed,” Blanche said.