So his attacker had launched attacks like an assassin and then vanished under a curtain of very subtle manipulations.

Or so it appeared.

In the real, Gabriel hauled on Ariosto’s reins, both really and metaphorically, and the great avian’s wings cupped air and they slowed their descent very suddenly. They were perhaps half a league above the forests of the Massif. Gabriel leaned out over his saddle and cast a very unsubtle bolt of golden lightning.

Once, when Gabriel was very young, he had been hiding from his brothers, who were, as usual, tormenting him. Or perhaps he had tormented them. It didn’t matter; he ran into the stables to hide, and he ran into the cellars where the winter grain was stored for the destriers, and there, when he kicked a bag in his rush to hide, a veritable carpet of mice flowed out; hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. He had stood in shock, unable to move; the carpet flowed away into the darkness and away from the shaft of sunlight coming down the stair shaft.

His lighting bolt struck something, and it exploded outward like the tide of mice. It was organic, it was malevolent, and it had a passive shield, which Gabriel has assumed, until that moment, was impossible.

And then he was blinded by the thing’s response.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The San Colombo Pass—Ser Alison

Hundreds of leagues to the south and west, the combined strength of Venike, Berona, and the company descended the San Colombo Pass and wound its way back into Etrusca.

Sauce and the duchess had discovered that they had a great deal in common, and there was a good deal of laughter as their armies drove south.

Kronmir envied them. The duchess paid him little attention, and as both of them were well versed in the tactics of scouting and exploration, they had little need for the Thrakian, who rode with ill-concealed temper.

It wasn’t just being ignored. Knighthood lay on Kronmir’s shoulders like a burden, an unasked-for reward that threatened his equilibrium.

I am a spy, not a man of honour. If I have honour, it is my secret. And when I order a man’s death by stealth, is that knightly?

Who does he mock? Me, or chivalry?

Why can Giselle not notice me, if only for a moment? To be polite?

Why am I behaving like a child?

It was a little more than a hundred imperial leagues from Arles to Mitla, leaving aside the towering mountains and the winding San Colombo Pass through them. Six days’ march for a determined army.