He could have stayed with the Montereau family, as a guard for the widow, serving the angry son who was nearly of age now and hated the Barratins with the proper fury of someone whose father had been murdered (and whose own future had been placed very much at risk).

He’d done it, though: become a serjeant. Wasn’t entirely sure why, he wasn’t good at reasoning through why he did things. The woman who lived with him and who he (mostly) loved and who (probably) loved him said it was a flaw. She had identified many flaws in him over the years.

But being a serjeant was a good position, and it ensured, pretty much, that he’d stay in Orane, and he liked it in Orane. The Montereau family went back and forth between the city and their château. Many of their guards, also, had found themselves headed north to war in the spring. Some glory for those who were there for the defeat of the Anglcyn, but Claquin noted (and pointed out to his woman) that none of them received promotions, or ransoms for prisoners taken, or anything at all. Just risk on a battlefield, or on the way to and from.

Glory doesn’t feed you, he’d said. She hadn’t argued with him that time, as he recalled. They had a child on the way, due at autumn’s end.

Right now, in the tavern, he was, as often, not certain what to do.

He’d been posted as one of the guards tonight for the poet who had returned to the city. Guiene had been assigned to him when Thierry Villar arrived inside the walls, escorted. Seemed the poet was a friend of sorts to the new provost. Guiene wasn’t sure yet what he thought of Medor Colle, but the others seemed to like him well enough.

The poet was actually someone he remembered. From that winter night. The murder. The murders he reminded himself. Two of their men had died with the duke.

Could have been him. Maybe that’s why he thought about it so often.

Right now, in The Lamb—a good tavern, in his view—he was unsure how to react to the fact that the poet had just been assaulted by one of the women who worked here. It was a serious punch, he thought, directed at a man they were here to guard, but also…it was a woman! And just to the shoulder. But not…playful?

He stayed where he was, uneasily, sitting at a table by the wall, but he leaned forward a little, to see better. The poet seemed surprised more than anything, he decided. That made sense. Claquin was very surprised! Then he realized that people were laughing, amid shouted greetings to Villar. It didn’t seem cause for alarm, then. Some were demanding the man give them a poem.

Claquin didn’t understand poetry at all.

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