Orso was looking approvingly around the room, which was almost as big as Skarling’s Hall and a damn sight more expensively furnished, with glittering vases and polished wood and candles twinkling in gilded holders. “So… you won.”

“I did,” said Rikke, enjoying a little swagger about the tiles herself. Nothing had been easily won, after all. Might as well enjoy it.

“I lost,” said Orso, but without much rancour.

“So I hear.”

He stood, took the stopper from the decanter with a pleasant clinking of glass. “The Queen of the Northmen!”

“Just Black Rikke. If you’ve got the power you don’t need the title.”

“I was always the other way around. So many titles. No power at all.” And Orso snapped out a little laugh and started pouring two glasses of wine. He looked even more carelessly at ease as the Union’s most wanted outlaw than he had as its crown prince. “Your friend Isern isn’t wrong. I’m afraid I’m…” And he looked up from under his brows with that smile that seemed to give her a sharper tickle every time. “Trouble.”

“And you’re happy to tread trouble across my carpet?”

“My old standard-bearer thought it was a bad idea but… no one would expect me to come to you.”

“I’ll confess I’m fucking astonished.” But the truth was Rikke was glad to see him, and not just because of the pearl dust and the drink. Though partly because of the pearl dust and the drink. And partly because he was handsome, and funny, and charming, and the certain knowledge that he was a very excellent lover was kissing constantly at the back of her pearl-dusted mind. She had to keep herself hidden, these days. Behind the tattoos and the knowing smiles and the stony heart. With him, she could let herself show.

“I need someone to get me out of Adua,” he said. “Someone powerful. Someone brave. Someone with a large entourage, in which an extra face, suitably obscured, might go unnoticed. And you did write me that letter, after all, so I wondered if you might still have some trifling attachment to my lost cause?”

“Mostly suited my own needs, if I’m honest. But it’s true I’ve always liked lost causes.”

“There was… something else.” He paused, his grin curling wider, as if he was casting his mind back to a happy memory. “That night we spent together. And that morning after. I’ve thought about it often.”

She couldn’t help smiling herself. “So have I.” In fact, she was thinking about it right now, and she pulled one of those ridiculous lace gloves off with her teeth. It was all out of shape from the damp anyway.

“I’ve wondered, now and again, what might have happened… had we been different people.”

She licked her finger and thumb and started snuffing out candles, each one dying with a little fizz and a curl of smoke. “So have I.” The room gradually grew dimmer, gradually felt hotter, in spite of the clammy fabric clinging to her, till there was only the gleam on the gold thread in the curtains, on the silverware and the glassware, at the corners of Orso’s smiling eyes.