“Yes?” she said, noncommittally.

“I am looking for any friend of Thierry Villar here,” he said. “The poet,” he added helpfully. And then, “It is important.”

The two women—and she was one of them—made, Silvy thought, genuinely strange companions. Amusing, if you were in that sort of mood. She wasn’t. She was still uncertain why she was doing this. Why anyone had thought she could be useful. Yes, the soothsayer, the seer, whatever he called himself, that unsettlingly ambiguous visitor to The Lamb, had been precise about what he’d seen—in a vision, he said—and what needed to happen now. But even so…

“And would you also be going on this journey?” she’d asked, back in the tavern.

He’d laughed, so loudly Eudes had looked over from behind the bar.

“Don’t,” the very well-dressed man had said, “be ridiculous.”

“But you think I should?”

He’d turned serious. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“And who are you?”

It was by way of confirming, mostly. She’d known him before he named himself, just from the look of him. Gauvard Colle was a name wrapped in mystery in Orane’s twilit world, which included the taverns. His services were used by the court, too, so…not exclusively twilit. He wasn’t exclusively male or female, either, was the word people shared quietly. Silvy didn’t care about that. All kinds made up the world, in her experience.

She did care about what he’d told her.

It was why she now found herself, two days later, in a large carriage travelling west on a rutted, bone-shaking road with Marina di Seressa, two serving women crowded in with them. Decisions had been made at speed.

The servants were here to assist the lady, of course. A well-born woman did not travel without attendants. Having only two was a deprivation of sorts, probably, Silvy thought.

But also, in a deeply uncertain time, they had eight guards on horseback escorting them. Four from the provost, and four had been added by the queen when Gauvard had gone on from the Châtelet to the palace to inform her concerning this matter of the poet.

Silvy had been with him in both places, overwhelmed, trying hard not to show it. In the palace—the palace!—she had fumbled through a curtsy. She had no idea how to do a proper one. Why would she know? She’d felt like dropping to her knees, looking at the queen.

Marina di Seressa had been summoned. She’d entered, performed a flawless salute to the queen. Looked quizzically at Silvy, and raised her eyebrows on seeing Gauvard Colle. She knew him, Silvy registered. He repeated for her what he’d just said.