He was extremely clever. Silvy and Anni had both known that all along. Anni had wondered whether she should marry him.

“He has land!” she said.

“Has he suggested marriage to you?” Silvy inquired.

“No, but I could ask him?” Anni said, a little doubtfully.

They both knew Eudes was not really the marrying kind. Wasn’t even really the lovemaking kind, either. His bed with Anni was quiet. Silvy had spent enough nights upstairs with the two of them to know. Anni knew it better, of course, but Silvy did know. You could sometimes tell, with a man. Or a woman.

Still, the sweetest person they knew. And after he’d returned from that journey home, he’d signed over a small but real share in The Lamb to Silvy. She’d run the tavern extremely well in his absence. He’d looked at the records, heard from regular patrons. And Silvy was a woman, didn’t have the advantage of bulk and strength in keeping order. Things which always helped.

She had cleverness instead, a head for figures, and a sharp tongue. And the men who worked for them, making food or behind the bar or in the stable, pretty much adored her, and were always ready to deal as needed with anyone unruly.

So she was a person who owned property now. A share of a successful tavern in the city.

It was, and she knew it, a kind of miracle. A gift of the god. And of Eudes. And, indirectly, of Anni, who truly showed no envy or resentment. Anni shared his bed. Silvy was usually in her own, downstairs, except on the coldest winter nights, or when Anni really wanted her, and made it clear.

Marina di Seressa had invited her to stay in the palace when they’d returned with the king and queen from Chervaux: she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Bianca now, formally. But Silvy knew it was an invitation born of courtesy, that their time as lovers had been an…interlude.

She’d learned that word from Thierry. It meant, he’d said, a time in between. In a life, or in a poem. After one thing, before the next. Sometimes a bridge, sometimes a break, he’d said. A pause. Interludes could operate differently in life, in writing. She hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the writing part. Thierry was the poet. She was his friend, but didn’t care about writing craft, and he could go on about it, if she was honest. He liked to explain things. She humoured him, some of the time.

But she’d remembered the word, and that was what her springtime in Marina’s bed in the countryside felt to have been. For both of them, she thought. Besides—and this is what she told the other woman—she had a tavern to attend to. It was her present and her future.

“You will visit me here?” Marina had asked.