Not everyone alive in that winter night, and the following day when chaos erupted, would live to see the flowers return, or the warmth of summer, or enjoy the fruits of the harvest that followed. But that is always so. Men and women live with a heart-deep uncertainty every morning when they wake. It is why they go to war, why they write poems, fall in and out of love, plan thefts on dark nights, or try to forestall them. Why they pray. Or refuse to pray.

It is the uncertainty that shapes and defines our lives. The tears of the world, a longing for joy. Or even just safety. Just that.

—

Joy. Safety. They can be present for us, more often are not.

Chapter II

Claquin Guiene had never planned to become any lord’s guardsman, in Orane or anywhere else. He owed his current position to his “Uncle” Ruppe, his mother’s very special friend, as she’d described him to her son when Claquin was quite young and his father still alive.

He’d had vivid dreams of killing his so-called uncle once he was old enough to understand a little of the world, including the sounds that sometimes came from the other room of the farmhouse when his father was working in their field.

Then his father died of an injury in that field (fell, cracked his head on a rock he ought to have cleared away before), and it had to be admitted that Ruppe Hanse took steps to ensure a future for the young man, no longer a boy, who was now, evidently, his charge.

The officer paid to keep the peace in their market village said he knew someone who knew someone, and Claquin was sent away from home. To Orane, on his own (which was terrifying), with a letter of introduction. He couldn’t read, but Hanse read it out to him, and he was told what man he had to find inside the city’s walls.

A little over a week later he walked through the southern gates of the king’s city, the mad king’s overwhelming city. He was given directions to where he was to go. No one had robbed or murdered him on the road to Orane, things he’d pretty much expected would happen, and no one did so now.

At a château larger than any house he’d ever even seen in his life, Claquin was admitted to the guards’ quarters. He showed a man his letter, then answered a few questions briskly asked by the very large, bald, thickly bearded captain their village serjeant knew (he could use a stave in a fight, yes; not a sword, no, was very willing to learn; no, he didn’t know he spoke with a peasant’s accent, was very sorry about that).