In the darkness, Signe rubbed her aching fingers together under the bedcovers; she always seemed to be cold these days. In her time, all the young men had fallen in love with her in that same way. She had known how to deal with it, though. How to deny them the grace they had to be denied while leaving them their pride and even binding them more closely to her—and so, more importantly, to Guibor and the causes of Arbonne in the world. There was an art to the rituals of courtly love, and a purpose. She knew: she was the one who had defined and shaped both the purpose and the art.

Thirty years ago there might have been arts she would have practised to bind this Gorhaut coran to her. Not now, though; those were the tools and contrivances of younger women and, she judged—and her judgment was extremely good in these matters—with a different man. Not so soon after Lucianna Delonghi was done with him would Blaise of Gorhaut tread the path a woman's allure offered or besought.

Which left anger and hatred as the emotions they could most easily invoke, neither of which came readily to her hand, either long ago in her youth or now, with Guibor gone and the world a sad and empty place. It fell not neatly to her to invoke a son's hatred of his father to achieve her own ends, however desperately needful those ends might be.

And yet. And yet the man had spoken the words himself, with none of them to goad or induce them: What else would you have me do? Ride home in fell wrath and declare myself the true king of Gorhaut?

He hadn't meant it, hadn't known he might even possibly mean it, but the pain of Iersen Bridge was so raw in him, and so was his knowledge of his father's designs. Most of the world that mattered knew that Galbert de Garsenc's younger son had left Gorhaut denouncing the treaty his father had devised.

It might be possible. It might indeed be barely possible to find a rift here to widen north of the mountains in Gorhaut. She felt old though, and tired. She wished she could sleep. She didn't want to deal with matters of war. She wanted music and what warmth the sun could offer as summer ripened the vines. She wanted the gentler warmth of memories.

There came a very quiet tapping at her door. Only one person she could think of would be knocking here this late at night.

"Come in," she said. The fire and the single taper were still burning. By the flickering of their light she saw her last living child open and then close the door behind her, entering the room in a pale night-robe, with a sure tread that belied her blindness. The white owl lifted and flew to one of the bedposts.

Signe remembered the first time she'd seen Beatritz after her daughter's eyes had been sacrificed. It was not a memory she cared to relive. Even knowing the ancient, most holy reasons and the power gained, it was hard for a mother to see her child marred.

Beatritz came to stand beside the bed. "Did I wake you?"

"No. I'm thinking too much to be able to sleep."

"And I. Chasing too many thoughts on Rian's night." Her daughter hesitated. "Is there room for me, or will I disturb you? I'm troubled and fearful."

Signe smiled. "Child, there is always room for you beside me." She pulled the coverings back and her daughter lay down with her. Signe lifted one arm to enfold her and began to stroke the greying hair, remembering how soft it had been, how dark and shining and soft when Beatritz was a child. There had been two brothers and a sister and a father then. There are only the two of us left, Signe thought, humming a tune she'd almost forgotten. Only the two.

Walking back from the chapel of the god to Bertran's city palace, Blaise made a determined effort to empty his mind. There would be time in the morning and the days to come to think, to try to deal with the revelations of this night and the improbably, treacherous pathways that seemed to have been opened up before him. It was very late now, and he was bone-weary.

The streets were quiet; only occasional couples or small groups of apprentices went by, carrying wine and crumpled masks. Both moons were over west and the clouds were gone, chased by the breeze. It was still some time before dawn though, even on this shortest night of the year; overhead the stars were bright. They were said to be the god's lights in Gorhaut, Rian's here; Blaise wondered, for the first time, how much that difference mattered in the end. They would still be there, still as remote and coldly bright, whichever power mortal man linked them with. There were said to be lands—fabled and mysterious—far to the south beyond deserts and seas where different gods and goddesses were worshipped. Did the same stars shine there, and as brightly?

Blaise shook his head. These were late-night thoughts and useless ones. He was ready to fall into his bed and sleep for hours. In fact, he could probably drop off here in the street like the figures he could see sprawled in doorways. Most of those figures were not alone, and he could guess what had preceded their slumbers.

He had gone earlier to the largest of the domed temples of Rian, his first time ever inside such a place. He'd wanted to see Valery before the night was done. They'd let him in without demur; he'd expected to have to offer blood or some such ritual, but nothing of the sort took place. Valery had been sleeping. They'd let him stand in the doorway of the coran's room and look in by candlelight. Blaise could see that the shoulder had been carefully bandaged; as for the other healing thing that had happened here, that he had no way of judging, or even comprehending. In his experience syvaren had always killed.

On his way out he had seen an assembled company of people, both men and women, gathered in the largest part of the temple under the high dome. A priestess in a white robe was leading them through a service. Blaise hadn't lingered. He'd gone from there to the nearest house of Corannos, washing his hands ritually at the entrance, with both the supplication and the invocation spoken, and had knelt on the floor in the small, bare, stone-walled coran's chapel in front of the frieze. He'd been alone there, for the first time in a long time, and he'd tried to let the deep, enveloping silence lead him back into the presence and serenity of the god.

It hadn't happened though, not this night. Even in the chapel his mind had kept on circling back, like a hunting bird above a field where a hare has been seen, to that room in the Carenzu palace when he had said what he had said. He hadn't been serious, not even remotely so; the words had been meant to make clear to them all how helpless he truly was, whatever he might feel about what his father and King Ademar had done in Gorhaut. But they hadn't heard it that way, and in the silence that followed his outburst, when the white bird had lifted itself and settled on his shoulder, Blaise had felt the knock of his heart like a fist on the door of destiny.

He felt it again now, walking home through the quiet disarray of the streets, and he tried to force his mind away from such thoughts. He was too tired, this was too large.

Young Serlo was on guard under the lamps burning at the entrance to the duke's city palace. He nodded at Blaise from inside the iron gates, looked to left and right up the street and moved to open the gates. They hadn't been locked—one of the traditions of Midsummer here—but after an assassination attempt, a guard at the main entrance had seemed appropriate. Bertran's corans, led by Valery of Talair, were very good; there had been no training needed here, and even some things for Blaise to learn. The ongoing skirmishes with the corans of Miraval had had more than a little to do with that. A long-simmering feud among neighbouring castles shaped its own rules of conflict, very different from the clashes of armies.