He gave his adoptive father’s name, and that of Ambroise’s small sanctuary. He was aware of recklessness, but also of a steadily thrumming excitement underneath.

He watched her walk to a low chest and open it. She took out a scarf in green and gold, and a small cloth bag. She came to him, reclaimed the caltrop, wrapped it in the scarf, laid it in the bag. “Will your coat’s pocket hold this? I don’t think it matters if the bag is seen, but better it isn’t.”

He reclaimed the coat, put it on, took the bag. He felt it bumping against his leg in the inner pocket, sharp and hard, even wrapped.

“I should survive this,” he said.

“Don’t speak lightly,” she said. “And…walk quickly, wherever you are going.”

“He knows my name,” Thierry said. “He can find me.”

She smiled. “He almost knows your name, Villardin.”

His turn to laugh.

He went out. At the top of the wide stairs a guard met him and escorted him down past others. Laurent de Barratin had his house very well defended just now. Thierry was eyed coldly by every man he passed, and then again by those in the street before the palace. He didn’t see the duke again.

Walking back west, he registered two things. It seemed to be warmer. He wondered. He hoped. They had to hope, but it was likely just a brief easing as the wind died down.

Also, it was growing dark now. Light draining from the wintry sky, his city gaining shadows. He loved it this way, too. The street he was walking was very quiet. Shops closed or closing on either side. I am, Thierry realized, carrying evidence against a murderer.

And then years of training at the university came back and he realized…he really wasn’t. Only something that could get him killed. A tavern poet had a caltrop in his pocket. Said he’d gotten it inside the palace of the Duke de Barratin. That it had been found on the street in front. A shocking accusation! And it proved what, in any case? He might have found it anywhere in Orane! Could he summon Marina di Seressa to support him? Throw her into this cauldron too?

No. It was wisest to discard the accursed object right now.

He didn’t do that.

A lifelong stubbornness for which he still didn’t know, even as a grown man, the origins. He was also angry, he realized. Not a prudent thing, but it was there.