“You do not always need to know answers. And you do not always need to tell everything, either.”

Thierry felt exposed, raw. He cleared his throat. “That’s hard for me.”

Gauvard looked at him, one hand gentling the cat. “Why would it be easy?”

He gestured, dismissing them. The cat jumped down, went back by the fire.

—

“De Vaux will have a choice to make,” Gauvard repeated at the door, letting them out into the night. “I am happy it isn’t mine.”

“You would step away from this?” Medor said. A note of accusation.

“Yes! I would! I may be old, but I’d like to grow older still. I have things yet to discover,” said his uncle. “I believe your provost might feel the same. Good night. Be careful in the streets.”

He closed the door. Thierry heard him bolting it.

Gauvard had suggested they depart through a back way to an alley, unseen. Medor had declined. It was, Thierry thought, likely not in the nature of serjeants to hide in the city. They walked, briskly, but not hurrying.

“I have questions,” Thierry said.

“Of course you do,” Medor said sourly. He was looking up and down the icy, unlit roadway as they walked. They were alone, or appeared to be. Carried no torch now. Probably should have asked for one, Thierry thought.

“This is a man? A woman? You said uncle.”

“He says it is better for his business to present himself as a man. It is…complex.”

“I’m sure it is. He really held you as a babe?”

A few steps in silence. “He’s related, on my father’s side. He was rejected by the family young. Made his own life after that. In Orane, and elsewhere for a time. I don’t think it was easy. Gauvard is…different, as you saw. I only learned of his existence from my older brother some years ago. Was curious, sought him out.”

“Why?”

“Told you. I was curious. You ask many questions, Villar.”

“Says the man who just said he was curious. Questions are good,” Thierry exclaimed. “How else do we learn things?”

“Not my task in life to help you do that. Unless you decide you want to become a serjeant. There I could help, might even be ordered to. You could do worse. I told you, de Vaux is the best man I know. You could change your life, Villar.”

Thierry’s turn to walk in silence. He heard an animal behind them. A dog, he hoped. He said, “I don’t want to change my life.”

Medor glanced over at him. “Poetry? Dice and cards and drink? Different beds every night?”

“Those, and freedom.”

“And poverty? The need to rob a sanctuary?”

Thierry winced. “That was a stupid thing.”

“Very. Why?”

“So many questions, Medor Colle.”

The other man laughed again, that quiet laugh, almost unwilling, as if his own amusement surprised him.