“Certainly, Majesty.” Father Knout smiled more broadly. “As you say, there can be no harm in it. The Great God Rile desires only peace. His priests in Maloresse will—”

While Knout was speaking, Magister Facile gasped suddenly, “Majesty! It is an ambush!”

At that instant, both of Father Knout’s servants moved.

Estie had seen Lylin fight. The devotee of Spirit was fast, too fast to seem human. The men with the priest were as fast.

Some vile theurgy has touched them.

With the speed of a bullet, the closer man attacked. His fist hit Magister Facile’s sternum. Estie heard bones crumple: she may have heard shards shred arteries, lungs, viscera. The force of the blow flung the old woman backward. She fell hard, flopped like a doll among the grasses.

Estie’s gaze—her whole heart—followed the Magister’s fall. She did not see the other servant open a mouth full of teeth like fangs, sharp and pointed, made for ripping. She did not watch him take hold of the priest, sink his teeth into the priest’s throat, tear out Father Knout’s life in a spray of blood. She did not know that the last expression on Knout’s face was one of utter astonishment.

Afterward, she remembered hearing the crack of a rifle. Too late, the guardsman Crayn had sent to hide behind the carriage had fired. His slug had pierced the head of Magister Facile’s attacker. The man’s head had burst like an egg struck by a rock.

Some time later, she learned that Crayn had slain Knout’s killer. His blade had cut open the man’s throat. From the wound, the killer’s strength had gushed from him. He had fallen on top of Father Knout. Tangled together, they had lain in the spreading pool of their blood.

But moments passed before Estie was aware of anything except Magister Facile. When the Magister was hit, Estie followed the woman’s collapse and sprawl as if she and the old woman had been tied together. She plunged to her knees and pulled the Magister’s head into her lap before Facile’s limbs stopped twitching.

Blood gasped from Magister Facile’s mouth with every dying breath. She managed one word: a spatter of red. Then she was gone.

Her last word was, “Decimate.”

Queen Estie did not know how long the shock held her; but eventually she began to recover.

She still clasped Magister Facile’s head in her lap. The old woman looked shrunken somehow, diminished in death. Her eyes stared at nothing that did not horrify her.

Was this all that remained of the old woman who had saved Amika’s Queen from her deranged father? This thin figure that had collapsed in on itself? This stain of blood? They were not enough to measure the meaning of Magister Facile’s life.