Heat climbed my neck. During our years on the run the Lady's forces had overtaken us several times. Queen's Bridge was the worst. A hundred brothers had fallen there. And to my shame, I left the Annals behind, buried in the river bank. Four hundred years worth of Company history, abandoned.

There was just so much that could be carried away. The papers down in the Hole were critical to our future. I took them instead of the Annals. But I suffer frequent bouts of guilt. I must answer the shades of brethren who have gone before. Those Annals are the Black Company. While they exist, the Company lives.

"We escaped and escaped, and will continue to escape. It is fated."

She smiled, amused. "I have read your Annals, Croaker. New and old."

I began throwing wood onto the embers of my fire. I was not dreaming. "You have them?" Till that moment I had silenced guilt with promises to recover them.

"They were found after the battle. They came to me. I was pleased. You are honest, as historians go."

"Thank you. I try."

"Come to Charm. There is a place for you in the Tower. You can see the grand canvas from here."

"I can't."

"I cannot shield you there. If you stay, you must face what befalls your Rebel friends. The Limper commands that campaign. I will not interfere. He is not what he was. You hurt him. And he had to be hurt more to be saved. He has not forgiven you that, Croaker."

"I know." How many times had she used my name? In all our contacts previously, over years, she had used it but once.

"Don't let him take you."

A slight, twisted bit of humor rose from somewhere inside me. "You are a failure. Lady."

She was taken aback.

"Fool that I am, I recorded my romances in the Annals. You read them. You know I never characterized you as black. Not. I think, as I would characterize your husband. I suspect an unconsciously sensed truth lies beneath the silliness of those romances."

"Indeed?"

"I don't think you are black. I think you're just trying. I think that, for all the wickedness you've done, part of the child that was remains untainted. A spark remains, and you can't extinguish it."

Unchallenged, I became more daring. "I think you've selected me as a symbolic sop to that spark. I am a reclamation project meant to satisfy a hidden streak of decency, the way my friend Raven reclaimed a child who became the White Rose. You read the Annals. You know to what depths Raven sank once he concentrated all decency in one cup. Better, perhaps, that he had had none at all. Juniper might still exist. So might he."

"Juniper was a boil overdue for lancing. I am not come to be mocked, physician. I will not be made to look weak even before an audience of one."

I started to protest.