He walked back towards The Lamb. Had two escorts waiting at the palace gates. They were intensely vigilant as they walked the streets. He hated needing guards, didn’t think he still did. Had lost that argument to Silvy and then with Medor Colle.

Though he had barely seen Medor since returning to Orane. It disturbed him.

One encounter at the Châtelet among several of the serjeants. Not private. The new provost, a man he’d really begun to think of as a friend, had been brisk, cool, distant.

“I came back only when you sent word it was safe,” Thierry had pointed out, making his case.

“Might have been a mistake on my part,” Medor said.

“What happened in The Lamb had nothing to do with—”

“Villar, we are not going through this. You’ll have a guard until it feels to me that matters have changed enough.”

Villar. Not Thierry.

That had been a week ago.

On impulse, Thierry changed his route. He told the two serjeants. They needed to be alerted. They were men following orders, and one of their own had died doing that.

A large number of the serjeants of Orane had escorted the wagon bearing Fermin de Mardol to Gallows Hill. And had stayed to watch him hang.

Thierry hadn’t gone. Neither, unsurprisingly, had Jolis.

He gave the serjeants their new destination. It was a neighbourhood with a mixed reputation. Good homes among some…rather less so. A hint of the disreputable, in various ways. They moved closer to him, one before, one behind.

It was daytime in Orane. Sunlight, white clouds, a breeze. They heard sanctuary bells mark another hour as they went, and then the songbirds came again, after. There were trees in summer leaf in gardens behind walls, and in public squares.

There was still danger in Orane, even in daylight. It was, he knew, part of his city. It held, Thierry thought, so much of life, the variety, the richness, the hazards of it.

You could fear that, or love it.

They came to the door he remembered, and he knocked. Brass knocker, shape of an owl. A servant answered this time. He announced himself. After a moment the servant came back and escorted him to a room he also remembered.

“You took Jad’s own time getting here,” said Gauvard Colle.

“I wasn’t aware I was awaited.”

“From when you came back to the city. And you should have been aware.”

“How? Really?”

“Because you know me and have been here before.”

“That makes,” Thierry said, irritated, “no sense at all.”

“Some people are far too concerned with things making sense.”