Hunold was a comrade from Yvian’s old mercenary days. He had a reputation as a soldier which reached even into such a backwater as Verlaine. Oddly enough his appearance did not match either his occupation, nor his reputation. Where Loyse had expected to see a man such as her father’s seneschal — though perhaps slicked over with some polish — she found herself fronting a silk clad, drawling, languid courtier, who might never have felt the weight of mail on his back. His rounded chin, long lashed eyes, smooth cheeks, gave him a deceptive youth, as well as the seeming of untried softness. And Loyse, trying to match the man to the things she had heard concerning him, wondered and was a little afraid.

Siric, who represented the Temple of Fortune, who tomorrow would say the words while her hands rested on the war ax, thus making her as much Yvian’s as if he clasped her in truth, was old. He had a red face and there was a swelling blue vein in the middle of his low forehead. As he listened or spoke in a soft mumble, he munched continually on small sweetmeats from a comfit box his servant kept ever in reach, and his yellow priest’s robe strained over a paunch of notable dimensions.

The Lord Duarte was of the old nobility. But in turn he did not suit his role very well. Small and thin, with a twitching tic which pulled at his lower lip, the harassed air of a man constrained to some task he loathed, he spoke only when an answer was demanded of him. And alone of the three he paid some attention to Loyse. She discovered him watching her broodingly, but there was nothing in his manner which hinted of pity or promise of aid. It was rather that she was the symbol of trouble he would like to sweep from his path.

Loyse was grateful that custom allowed her to escape that night’s feasting. Tomorrow she must sit through the start of the wedding banquet, but as soon as the wine began to pass — yes — then! Holding to that thought she hurried back to her room.

She had forgotten the sewing wench, and it was with a start that she saw a figure outlined against the window. The wind was dying now as if the worst of the storm had blown out. But there was another sound, the keening of one who has been hopelessly bereaved. And salt air bit at her from the opened pane.

Angry because of her own worries, tense over what was to come and to what she must nerve herself during the next twenty-four hours, Loyse sprang across the room and seized me swinging window frame, pulling at the girl that she might slam it shut. Though the wind had ceased, the clouds were still slashed by lightning.

And in one such revelation Loyse saw what the other must have watched for long moments.