“He’s here? This poet? Travelled to the city in this weather?”

The provost enjoyed surprising people. Probably a weakness.

“She,” he said. “And yes, she did.”

—

Of course he knew of Marina di Seressa, Thierry thought, outside in the cold again, scarf back over his face. How could someone who shaped words for a (precarious) living not know her name?

In the provost’s house he had been given better clothing than he’d been wearing, a warmer coat, and, finally, money to spend. Also to reimburse him for bad wine and a haircut. How fortuitous, he thought wryly: he’d had his hair and beard trimmed, would make a good impression!

He had said one more thing in the provost’s room.

“If this is…correct, will the court even want you to reveal it? Force a resolution?”

De Vaux had stared at him. “Half of them will,” he said, finally.

“Which is—?”

“Which is the difficulty, yes. But that is not my decision to make, Villar. It really is not.”

Walking the streets again now, sun shining, careful on the ice, Thierry was edgy, unhappy, afraid. Also, being honest, still perversely excited.

Not by the court-world poet he was going to see, if he could, though he would be happy to meet her, take her measure, but by this wildly unexpected proximity to power, to great events, however terrible.

It wasn’t a world he had ever expected to know. Jolis de Charette had been the closest he’d come, he supposed: born into a wealthy, ambitious family, though not noble. Her marriage was meant to achieve that last, of course. But in the meantime she’d enjoyed sampling tavern life: rogues and mild danger. Even, for a time, bedding a small, clever poet she’d found there and taken for her amusement. For what had turned out to be just her amusement. Silvy had warned Thierry, too.

Hadn’t worked out all that well for him, had it? Six months’ exile from his city, and limited to that only because of Ambroise Villar’s intense, immediate intervention, and because Rasse de Barille had been good enough not to die of his wound. Otherwise, Thierry would have hanged.

But this, today, was significantly loftier ground, both the woman he was going to meet and the city palace where she was. Loftier ground? This was a jagged mountain. And you died on mountains in winter.

Pushing the image a bit, Villar thought wryly. Thoughts, as well as writings, needed revisions. Also, he could have said no. The provost had a hold on him, but he’d made it clear this request was only that. Could be refused. Its own warning, that opportunity to decline. De Vaux knew what he was asking.