And then, in the early afternoon of the next day he pulled his horse alongside the carriage and gestured the driver to a halt.

“That’s an ambush place ahead,” he said. “I’ve a bad feeling.”

—

Bascot de Thunier had not been able to get his breathing under control after the Jad-cursed woman left. He was sprawled in a chair in the room where she had…she had slapped him! He was perspiring. Wiped at his forehead with a sleeve. He could see his death approaching, a ghastly skeleton.

He did do one thing. He ignored the instruction to send no message west. He had to do that! He knew what was being done to the trivial, presumptuous poet he’d sent to Aurage. Punishment and a likely death—but not at his hands, not in his château. The high cleric owed him favours. Many of them.

Perhaps, perhaps, if Jad was kind, the poet was not yet dead. Mercier would have sent word, surely, if he was. Surely?

He summoned his most trusted guard (though could he trust anyone now, after today?) and made the man wait by him in his study, with its pleasing view overlooking the woods and the pond he’d had dredged and stocked with fish.

He wrote a letter. Swiftly.

I pray for both of us to holy Jad that the accursed poet is alive. Release him, if so, clean him up, send him from you—with money. As much as you can manage! Frame an apology as best you can. The queen is a patron of this man! Her people are headed your way now on his behalf! How could we have known? I am ordered to Orane, to present myself. I was threatened with Gallows Hill. You will be too! Do what I have said. Immediately! Destroy this letter.

—de Thunier

The guard was instructed to ride to Aurage through the night. Speed was utterly of the essence, de Thunier said. His man was also to ensure he was not seen by anyone in or escorting the women’s carriage when he overtook it! The guard’s own life depended on it, he said.

A trained man on a good horse could go much faster than a carriage. De Thunier was relying on that, with all the prayers he could think of.

Guards came for him again in his dungeon.

Thierry knew it was day, he could see the faint presence of sunlight in the high, small window of his cell. He was still alive. Weak, gaunt, rat-bitten, and coughing. But not dead, by the god’s mercy.

It could make someone into a pious man, Thierry Villar thought, depending on what happened next.

What happened next was his departure from Aurage.

First there was a hot bath in a warm room, two women washing his body and hair, trimming and cleaning his fingernails, carefully picking the lice from him.