This page-squire system has its good points and its bad. The good one is it starts them young. The bad one is that you’re pretty well stuck with them once you’ve taken them on unless you want to expend political capital offending the little rat’s kinfolk.

The courtyard was worse than the main block. Guards jostled each other, and torches flared: pine knot torches, gas torches, lanthorns swung and the wind blew and the rain gusted past, and shadows passed gigantic and distorted on the dim rain-wet walls. Crossbowmen stood, sheltered by minimum-security prisoners holding tarps and umbrellas. Stratson was striding back and forth, issuing orders.

Those she could catch mostly seemed to contradict each other. The rest would cause a good many deaths if anything set a light to this soggy tinder; the crossbowmen were all in each other’s fields of fire, for example, and by their uneasy glances some of them had realized it, despite the darkness and chaos and rain.

He caught sight of Tiphaine and strode over. “My lady Grand Constable. Glad to see you. What should we do? I’m ready to fire the building.”

Tiphaine took a deep breath. “What exactly has happened since your last dispatch, Sir Stratson?”

He drew back and hesitated. Tiphaine looked closely at the face lit by the flickering gaslight. He was more than ever like a spooked horse as the whites of his eyes showed, rising and sinking on the balls of his feet. His head was jerking up and down slightly, too. She didn’t remember that.

Mary Liu, she knew. This is worse than I thought. What did Delia tell me? “You have to make them do something nice, or at least dutiful. It breaks the hold on their minds.”

Tiphaine nodded to herself.

“Wonderful job, Stratson, wonderful!” she said.

She turned to the men, pitching her voice to cut through the burr of noise and the hiss of the rain.

“Men of the guard detail! I am impressed by how well Sir Stratson has coped, and all of you. Thank you. I’m sure Sir Stratson will express his gratitude in ways that you will very much appreciate. Stay alert and maintain your present positions. Help each other stay awake. Buddy up, partner up and stay alert.”

To Sir Stratson: “Good man!”

She smacked him on the shoulder, gauntlet to the overlapping lames of a backplate, a genial gesture . . . and much more tactful than a slap on the face but just as likely to jar a mind out of a rut.

“The Lady Regent and old Norman certainly knew how to pick the right man for a job that might turn deadly. Let’s go to the maximum security wing and assess the situation.”