Some danger in the street for his nephew and the poet. He could sense it, but not do anything about it. Then a moment later he grasped more clearly what this was and he settled back, stroked the cat more easily. Thought about what he wanted his cook to prepare for dinner.

He was quite sure Medor was equal to this, even in darkness. Couldn’t send him a warning in any case. There were limits to what the half-world allowed him.

Be grateful for what it did allow: his reminder to himself, every day. He looked at the queen’s flowers, yellow, red, and that rich blue.

Another inward nudge. Not about a thing to be done but a new awareness. A thing to remember. Might be useful one day. Or not. You did not control the half-world. It allowed you, at times, glimpses.

He decided he felt more like a woman tonight. He called his housekeeper to tell the cook what he wanted to eat and then bring down an evening robe the queen had given him in thanks for counsel some years ago. It was eastern silk of the very finest kind, a colour between burgundy and red, fur-trimmed in white at collar and wrists.

He adored it. One of the pleasures life could still offer. Like two handsome men coming to call, one of them the nephew who did not know he was going to inherit everything Gauvard had. He liked surprising. He’d be dead for this one, of course, but who knew—who could possibly know?—he might be able to watch, see, smile when Medor learned what he’d done.

He didn’t intend to just die and drift away. Might happen, but it wasn’t his plan.

—

“You have a knife?” Medor asked briskly, over the animal sounds.

“Yes, but I’m not very—”

“Do what you can, if you need to,” the other man said, and turned, drawing his sword.

In the event, nothing was needed of Thierry at all. He stood there, gripping his knife, peering into the night. There were no lights where they were. One house up the street still had a lantern lit, you could see it faintly through closed shutters. It wasn’t even late, he thought.

He saw blurred shapes moving fast. And then Medor.

It was over with shocking speed. His eyes had adjusted just enough for him to see two wolves lying in the street.

He watched the serjeant walk over to one of them, carefully, and put his sword into it again. He was trying to come to terms with what he’d just seen.

Medor came back to him. “Did either of them reach you? Bitten or scratched?”

“No. Nothing close to me.”

The fear, the great fear, was the disease from an infected animal’s bite, for which there was no cure and of which you died in agony. Lyssava, the physicians called it.