“I am, lord.” He was known in a significant number of the city’s taverns.

“Very well. We will investigate here, talk to people in these houses, begin gathering facts. You are to do what I told you. In and out of taverns, now if you can, then through the morning. Talking at shopfronts, inside them. Use the curiosity everyone will have. Hear what is being said. Be clever, Villar. I need you to be clever.”

Thierry said, “That caltrop they found, the spikes. So they expected pursuit, threw them to defeat it.”

“I do know that, Villar.”

“And taking a large house on this street for so many men and horses? Means considerable resources. That they might serve someone who—”

“Stop! I know. Wiser, perhaps, not to speak yet, Villar. Do what I need you to do. Find me at midday. Go.”

Thierry looked at him. Then he dismounted cautiously, did it without help, and walked away, back towards the river. As he went, he saw that the blue moon had risen, a crescent. The Kindath—there were a number of them throughout Orane, they were not sequestered as in some cities—worshipped the two moons. Saw divinity in their phases and movements. A heresy against Jad, of course.

He’d had a Kindath lover once, a few years back. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, very clever. She’d been one of those who claimed to be able to read futures with cards. She’d never done his, not that he knew, at any rate. He hadn’t wanted to know.

Still didn’t.

—

Robbin de Vaux watched the poet go off.

He was remembering a winter campaign from his early years in the army, defending north towards the sea, against the Anglcyn and their treacherous allies among those who should have been loyal to the crown.

It had been more of a raid than a full campaign. It had been led by the constable of Ferrieres, however, and in the dead of winter, and in darkness, too, like this.

De Vaux missed the constable more than he could ever say. Would ever say. He loved his children, he respected and admired his wife, and he was properly grateful to his parents, but Jean Montel had been the enduring love of his life, right up to the older man’s death. You couldn’t say things like that. People wouldn’t understand how soldiers could feel about their commander.

They had approached the Château de Curton on the coast towards day’s end, waited at a distance, out of sight, then advanced after darkfall, in swirling snow. Curton was an Anglcyn bastion now on the soil of Ferrieres, taken years before. There were too many of those. But Curton had a harbour on a coastline with few of them, and so it mattered more.