He’d expected her to send someone to attack him for that verse, for some would-be next lover to do it for her esteem. Hadn’t happened, yet. Rasse had been discarded already, he’d learned. Hadn’t lasted long. Only a distant cousin of power, after all. Jolis aspired to more.

Ambroise Villar led him—limping a little this morning on the bad knee—into his simple room: a bed on one wall, a small table, two stools, papers, some books (books were expensive). One fireplace, not large enough, and an altar with a sun disk. Gold-plated only, the disk, but not tarnished. His mother worked hard to keep it bright. Thierry would have loved to have enough money to buy him a new one. If the planned theft last night had happened…

That was an awkward line of thought.

He asked his necessary question, and his adoptive father answered. No one this morning had known anything about the assassination, though rumours were all about. Everyone in the sanctuary had been terrified of what might happen next. Thierry asked about a very tall cleric, one who had been seen wearing a red robe, apparently, when Montereau was killed.

“He was among the assassins? A cleric?”

“Or pretending to be one.”

“No order in Orane wears red robes.”

“I know. Might have been just a winter garment.”

“Or a traveller from away. Very distinctive,” said Ambroise Villar, “if you want to be unknown.” He was, Thierry never really forgot it, a quick, clever man. Not as innocent as his eyes suggested.

“I thought about that. Maybe he did want to be known. Maybe he’ll never wear it again and people will search in the wrong direction.”

“Are people searching?”

“The provost is, yes.”

“And you are?”

Too clever sometimes, Thierry thought. He smiled, though. “He asked me to make inquiries this morning, in the taverns and shops.”

“And at a barber’s, I see. Why you, Thierry?”

So he did have to lie, after all. “Said I owed him, for last year.”

“That’s untrue! It was Barille, the duke. It had nothing to do with the provost.”

Another smile. “I should have argued with him?”

Ambroise laughed. “Fair.” He looked down at Thierry a long moment. “You’ll be careful?”

“I always try.” He hesitated. “Don’t tell anyone about this?”

“Bad in the circles in which you move? To be linked to the provost?”

“Quite bad, yes.”

“You trust Robbin de Vaux?”

To his own surprise Thierry answered, “I think I do.”

He hugged the lean cleric who’d saved and made their lives. Ambroise Villar was so tall, he made Thierry feel almost a child again. Not, in truth, a bad feeling with this man.

“You really need to eat more,” he said. He knew his mother was always saying it. “Especially in a winter like this.”

Ambroise shrugged, predictably.