He did not win the argument, but made me leave my weapons.

Robert Moray was awake. The stubble of his beard had filled in slightly since I’d seen him last on Monday, and again he wore no coat nor wig. This time he did not bother donning either, only faced me in his shirtsleeves with the weary air of someone plagued by tiresome formalities. “What now?”

We’d moved beyond polite good mornings, then. I said, “You have been less than truthful with me.”

It was so early in the morning still that no light penetrated through the small, barred window of his prison chamber. The high, vaulted ceiling and stone walls were cast in stark relief of light and shadow by two standing rushlights that allowed me to see his expression. “Tell me when I’ve lied.”

I found that an irritating challenge, because he had been so clever with his words I could not find a single instance to reply with, so instead I took a new approach. “You did not tell me everything the last time I was here, nor yet the time before that.”

“Ah.” He sat, and indicated I should do the same. “Well, that’s a different thing from lying, surely? All men do leave pieces out when they tell tales, it is no crime.”

I could not argue that. But, “You knew Lily was alive.”

That realization had struck me with certainty when I’d woken an hour ago, with Lily’s head upon my shoulder. I’d been dreaming of the Shore at Leith, and of James Graeme swinging Lily round, amazed and joyful that he’d found his friend again, and in my dream, Lily had looked toward me and explained, “It would be a great shock, I think, to meet a person you believed was dead.”

I said to Robert Moray now, “When Lily was a lass of ten, they found her lantern by the loch at Duddingston. They found her hood beside the broken ice. The story was that she’d been pining for her father, and had taken her own life. I know this. I was told this. Everyone was told this. Colonel Graeme stopped his custom with the swordslipper because of it.” I watched his face while I was talking. He was very good at not revealing his emotions, but I saw the subtle change that told me I was right. I carried on, “But when I came here that first day with Lily, while I’ll grant that you did not expect to see her, you were not surprised to see that she was living. Which does tell me you already knew that Lily was not dead.”

Once in battle I’d disarmed a more accomplished swordsman when he had not been expecting it, and now I saw an echo of the look that man had given me play over Moray’s features. His mouth curved. “Ye’ve missed your calling, Sergeant Williamson. Ye should have made a study of the law.”

“I am no educated man. I’ve neither wit nor patience,” I confessed, “to duel with words when there is action to be taken. Lily needs my help, and I would ask you to be honest with me.” I asked the question, straight. “How did you know she was alive?”