“No,” said King Roch. “From the man acting as high cleric of Orane, cousin. And we have seen the letters ourself. From the cleric you wanted to kill, and from the man you ordered to do it. You have just lied to us.”

The king looked at Thierry. Again.

And so…

“Shall I offer another verse for you, my lord duke? About this? The attempt and then a coward’s lie? What gift is worthy of such a nobleman? Give me but a moment, though, and I believe I can—”

He stopped. Because the duke of Barratin had drawn his sword and taken two steps towards him.

Two steps.

Three, and Thierry Villar would have been been dead on that bridge. The third step never happened. What takes place, what does not: so many forks and branches along the twisting roads of time, so many wheels of fate turning, turning, lifting and lowering, one person, another, into light, into darkness.

The dagger that struck Duke Laurent de Barratin in the eye—a dagger in a place where no such weapons were to be—was thrown, with considerable skill, by the provost of Orane, Medor Colle, stepping up beside the poet, beside his friend, the man he had said might need to be on the bridge.

But his was not the only forbidden blade there.

—

“No!” cried Gauvard Colle from down along the riverbank. “Medor!”

Silvy looked at him, a hand to her mouth. His delicate features seemed suddenly gaunt, ravaged. He shouted, “Make it not so!”

She saw him close his eyes. His hands clenched at his sides. He fell to his knees, facing the bridge downstream. Facing it blindly, she thought, with his eyes shut. But…perhaps not so. Perhaps another way of seeing?

She didn’t know. She knew nothing. But she knelt on the summer earth beside him and placed an arm around his shoulders, holding him close to her. She heard him speak words. They were clear, but she did not understand them.

There was movement on the bridge. Shouting reached them, even as far away as they were.

—

It was not Burkard van Aribert who threw the blade at Medor Colle. It was another officer of the duke’s army, stepping up. And he, too, was skilled. His own illicit knife was perfectly thrown to strike the provost in the heart and kill him there.

And yet it did not.

It should have. It was about to. Instead, it hit him in the left shoulder. It…it veered to the side in flight.

It did that. No man there could ever assert this for certain, but several thought it, thought so against their will. That they saw this happen, this impossibility. Never said so. Not one of them. Even Thierry, who was right there, and watched the dagger thrown, and who had perhaps the best view of it, never spoke a word about this.