He abruptly changed his mind about something. Ordered Medor and four men to go up the street immediately, with torches, but on foot to protect the horses, to see if they could find more of the caltrops. Aubrey had already ridden for the gates with another serjeant. A mistake. Their horses could be lamed if they trod on a spike; caltrops were vicious things. But he had needed the gates barred. And word if someone had gone out already. They’d have been muffled and cloaked for a certainty, he thought. Identification would be unlikely.

It was peacetime now. Spring might change that, but people were permitted in and out of Orane. The danger outside the walls was wild animals this winter, and wolves didn’t need gates. No one sensible would be going out in the dead of night, of course. Or no one not fleeing pursuit.

He had stopped the small poet from speaking any name as to who might have done this. Couldn’t stop himself from thinking one. It terrified him. But really, if you weren’t afraid now you were a fool, and he’d never been that. Besides, he reminded himself, they didn’t know anything yet. The slain duke lying here had made many enemies over the years. Husbands of his lovers, among them. This might be that. He…he wanted it to be that.

He had watched Thierry Villar walk, gingerly on the ice, back towards the river and then, harder to see beyond the torchlight, east along a laneway. Several taverns would be that way. Villar could hope to gain admittance, even in the dark, long after curfew. Some sort of knock or spoken word, maybe. The provost realized he liked the man, wasn’t sure why. You trusted your instincts.

It had been purest instinct, married to chance, that had led him to stop outside The Lamb on the way here and wait for Villar to come out with the third bells of the night. A poet-scholar, trained in philosophy and law, they’d told him. De Vaux supposed if you were going to be a thief, it might be of use to know the law.

The information as to where he was sleeping tonight had been good, and the timing was right. You used accidents like that. In warfare, and in these duties you had taken on when the constable had died and you’d decided it was time to bring your wife and family to the city. Change how you lived. Closer to the court, for the boys. Work towards shaping a future for them.

The information he’d gotten earlier about a planned theft at a sanctuary attached to the university had come before the vastly more eventful tidings of an assassination. So he’d been awake when word of this murder came.