“Hmmmf. Well, anyway, they don’t have any history with Mackenzies, except recently. And you and Edain saved Fred’s father’s life during that brush with the Cutters, right after we met them out east over the mountains.”

“Right you are, acushla. It’s not as if you had nothing to do, sure!” Fred blinked and took a deep breath. His father’s death still hit him, occasionally. He remembered that occasion just after Rudi and the others had showed up in Boise territory vividly; it was barely two years ago. The last time the world was right, before what he thought had been solid dissolved beneath him into a morass of treachery. The desert road in the bright sunlight, the taste of dust, the steady tramp of the troops, his father a grimly competent tower of strength, and still the man who’d been there all his life, the private man the iron reputation didn’t know. Then the sudden paralyzing horror as he realized there were assassins hiding in the guard detail itself, and the cloth yard shafts going by with a whippt and driving into armor with hard ringing impacts . . .

Before Martin was a traitor. But he was, even then: I just didn’t know it. Rudi and Edain killed those Cutter infiltrators, but his own son killed Dad later at Wendell. I didn’t think I could hate anyone in all the Nine Worlds as much as I hate Martin now, but he’s still my big brother. Even when he was an asshole I loved him, but now . . . I guess you hate someone who’s turned on you worse than someone who’s just an enemy.

He took a deep breath. Duty first. That was something his father’s training and that of his new faith agreed on utterly.

“Let’s go, Your Majesty,” he said formally.

A little to the north was the canal that supplied the town’s water and powered its mills; they could hear a grumbling sound through the screen of trees, as grain was ground and wood sawn and flax pounded. Then they turned south and crossed the Sutter river itself and its band of oaks and firs, willows and shaggy meadows; that was Clan land, sacred to Cernunnos and Flidais, barred to heavy use by humankind and the tame animals that lived with men. Its edges were marked at intervals by tall stakes carved with a stag-headed man or a white deer, and the Mackenzies made a reverence as they passed. Several had small offerings of flowers at their feet.