Standing beneath one of those glaring windows was the Grand Constable, Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath, in dark elaborate male court dress and an ostrich plume in the clasp of her chaperon hat. Yseult shuddered under the cold gray gaze.

Quietly Yseult identified some of the others. Chaka, Lord Mollala, young and burly and chocolate dark like his sister Jehane, with a frown on his scarred and bluntly handsome face. Sir Garrick Betancourt, and Lady Delia de Stafford, in subdued formal dress much less fanciful than what her reputation as a leader of fashion would make you expect.

Ranged along the back and sides were the faceless, black-armored men of the Protector’s Guard. Two flanked the Lady Sandra, their naked long swords over their shoulders.

In the Lord Protector’s day they would have been behind me and Huon. Ready to take off our heads. Lord Chaka’s father stood like that once, after the Princess was kidnapped by the Mackenzies while she was visiting with him. He was pardoned, though.

The Regent studied them from behind the desk in a silence that stretched. Yseult looked up into the dark brown eyes under the cream-silk wimple with its platinum band. She’d heard of drowning in someone’s eyes, usually in bad love songs, but never like this. Such an ordinary face, smooth and slightly plump and middle-aged . . .

For an endless time all was still. Then Sandra spoke, her contralto voice quiet and emotionless as water of rocks in an ornamental garden.

“This investigation is convened. Let it be noted that We—”

She used the royal pronoun, a sign that the business was very, very official. Jehane’s pen scratched and scritched steadily on the paper. She wrote quickly and neatly in shorthand, a little silver clip holding her sleeve back from the ink.

“—are not sitting in Star-Chamber.”

Yseult’s eyes went up involuntarily. Star-Chamber did have stars on its arched ceiling, or so rumor said. Sessions of that court were strictly secret. Sometimes even the sentence was never announced, just carried out.

“Let Huon Liu and Yseult Liu be sworn.”

A smooth-faced priest in a black robe brought out a great Bible in a tooled-leather cover, and a silver-gilt reliquary. Yseult put her hands on them and swore:

“. . . by my hope of salvation and in the sight of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Everyone crossed themselves; she kissed her crucifix as well. And I mean to tell the truth!

The Lady Regent joined in the gesture. She was a petite woman in her fifties; a gray cote-hardie showed beneath the ermine robe, buttoned by steel-gray Madras pearls and silver.

All these powerful lords, Yseult thought. And Lady Death, whose name is fear, and the Regent dominates the room as if she were a giant made of fire.