She had a moment to think on the nature of this returned Prince, Aileron, who could send men hither with orders to kill his only brother on command. Briefly she remembered Marlen, her own brother, whom she had loved and who was dead. Only briefly, though, because such thoughts were too soft for what she had still to do, despite this new difficulty. It had been easy to this point, she had no right to have expected no hindrance at all.

In the next moments, though, difficulty became something more, for ten men burst through the two doors of the high gallery; in pairs they came, with knives and swords drawn, and in cold, efficient silence they disarmed the archers and found her.

She had the presence of mind to keep her head down as they threw her together with the six archers. The gallery had been designed to be shadowed and torch-lit, with only the flames visible from below, so that music emanating therefrom would seem disembodied, born of fire. It was this that saved her from being exposed in the moments before the nobles of Brennin began to file in over the mosaic-inlaid floor below them.

Every man in that gallery, and the one woman, watched, absorbed, as the foreshortened figures moved to the end of the hall where stood a carved wooden throne. It was oak, she knew, and so was the crown resting on the table beside it.

Then he came forward into view from the perimeter of the room and it was clear that he had to die, because she was still, in spite of all, having trouble breathing at the sight of him. The golden hair was bright above the black of his mourning. He wore a red armband; so, she abruptly realized, did the ten men encircling her and the archers. An understanding came then and, though she fought it very hard, a sharp pleasure at his mastery. Oh, it was clear, it was clear he had to die. The broad-shouldered man with the Chancellor’s seal about his neck was speaking now. Then he was interrupted once, and, more intensely, a second time. It was hard to hear, but when a dark-bearded man strode to stand in front of the throne she knew it was Aileron, the exile returned. He didn’t look like Diarmuid.

“Kevin, by all the gods, I want his blood for this!” the leader of her captors hissed fiercely. “Easy,” a fair-haired man replied. “Listen.” They all did. Diarmuid, she saw, was no longer pacing; he had come to stand, his posture indolent, before his brother.

“The Throne is mine,” the dark Prince announced. “I will kill for it or die for it before we leave this hall.” Even in the high gallery, the intensity of it reached them. There was a silence.

Raucously broken by Diarmuid’s lazy applause. “God,” the one called Kevin murmured. I could have told you, she thought, and then checked it brutally.