The casa filed out of the gates. Down on the plain below, Count Zac had his Vardariotes formed in a column of fours—almost three hundred easterners.

“Michael,” Gabriel said. He reached into his breastplate and handed a roll of parchment to his former squire. “A letter for Blanche in the event of my death,” he said. He took a chain from around his neck. “And the key.”

It didn’t look like much.

“If we fall, you take Sauce and go. Leave Clarissa to hold here; this place has sorcerous protections as good or better than those at Lissen Carak. Understand me? This isn’t just an order; it is the only hope we’ll have.”

“I understand. What if you and Sauce both fail?” he asked.

“You really want to know?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes,” Michael answered.

“Then you have a choice. Stay here until everything else falls, or go and die at Lissen Carak. Hope for a miracle. Ash can be a fool; Gavin and the alliance may have a fighting chance even without us.” Gabriel shrugged. “There may be miracles in store. But to me, nothing has changed, and we need to win and win and win to even get a place at the table. Oh, and read everything in the yellow tab. Every word.”

Michael nodded. “Yellow tab?” he asked. “Yellow tab . . .”

“Until now you didn’t know there was a yellow tab,” Gabriel said. “Read it.”

Michael nodded. “I will. You go win.”

Gabriel smiled. “Generally, we do,” he agreed. “That’s why I’m so popular.”

He smiled.

Michael turned his head and saw Morgon Mortirmir in a passionate embrace with his young wife.

It went on and on.

People began to laugh.

Mortirmir surfaced. And spluttered. He turned bright red, and a little flame licked at the ends of his fingers.

Tancreda smiled beatifically.

“Let’s ride,” Gabriel said. But as the words left his mouth, Kronmir appeared at the top of the great hall steps, and Blanche was behind him. The iron-clad clip-clop of the heavy horses going out under the portcullis sounded like the footsteps of some approaching doom.

Kronmir came out to the emperor’s horse and handed him a flimsy straight from a messenger bird. Gabriel read it while Blanche came down the steps. She climbed the mounting block and waited.

Master Smythe dead.

Gabriel found that he had tears in his eyes. He looked down at Blanche. She looked up at him.

“Go quickly, and win,” she said. “Oh, Gabriel!”

Oh, Gabriel. Someday, perhaps tomorrow, I will receive a bird, and it will be you who is dead, and you will expect us to march on.

And we will, by God.

She kissed him.

“And I almost forgot,” she said, and gave him a sleeve of sheer silk, cunningly removed from a sheer wedding-night shift and embroidered with his motto.