She could not know it, but Bertran de Talair's thoughts just then were almost a mirror of her own: he was thinking that he could not remember the last time he had held a woman in this way, offering shelter and strength and not simply the passion of a moment. And then, a moment later, he realized that this was untrue: that he could remember the last time, quite well actually, if he allowed the memory in through his barriers.

The last woman he had held this way, his own heart beating as if for hers, had later died in Miraval giving birth to his child, twenty-three years ago.

Blaise stopped outside the partially open door of Rosala's room. He had been coming to tell her of the news that had reached them that night, feeling the dread of all such message-bearers, but not wanting her to learn it badly, from a stranger. Ranald had been at Aubry, Thaune had said, and Fulk de Savaric, her brother. About to knock, he heard two voices, and realized a moment later that he had been anticipated in his errand. He felt an unexpected mixture of emotions. Relief, mostly, in the end.

Uncertain whether to enter or leave, he heard Rosala abruptly speak in a stricken voice of taking the child back to Gorhaut. Grieving for her, understanding exactly what she meant, and humbled again by what it seemed she was, he heard Bertran de Talair, unexpectedly gruff, repeating an oath he'd evidently sworn to her before. Blaise heard Rosala begin to weep then, and through the angle of the door, in the light of the fire's glow, he saw the duke move to the arm of her chair to hold her while she cried.

He felt an intruder, a cause of the distress the other man was trying to assuage. He ought to have been comforting her himself, he thought. He owed her that much. He owed her at least that much. Blaise looked back up the corridor and saw Hirnan waiting discreetly at the farther end. Feeling his wounds again and weary still, but with a suddenly urgent need to at least finish what he had begun with the white rose this morning, he knocked on the door and said, quietly, so as not to startle them too greatly, "For what it is worth, I have an oath of my own from this morning to repeat."

They both looked up; Bertran calmly, Rosala wiping quickly at her eyes. She shifted a little then and the duke rose, allowing her to stand and then walk forward. A little too late Blaise realized what she was about to do. Quickly, trying to forestall her, he moved into the room so that, in the end, they ended up on their knees, both of them, facing each other before the fire. He wouldn't have blamed Bertran for laughing, but the duke was silent and watchful.

The lost children of Gorhaut, Lucianna had said two nights ago. Truth to that, Blaise thought. Through her tears he saw Rosala offer the glimmer of a smile.

"Will you not accept my homage, my lord?"

He shook his head.

"You will have to become accustomed to this," she murmured. "Kings can't go about kneeling to women."

"I am not a king yet," he said, "and to some women I think they can. I understand the duke of Talair has vowed that he will not let them take you while he lives." He looked at Bertran, whose expression remained devoid of irony. "Hear me, then. In the name of the most holy god, I swear I will keep faith with you, Rosala. My claim to the throne is as nothing if we surrender you and Cadar." He heard the roughness in his own voice at the end.

It was the first time he had actually spoken the child's name. It sounded strange to him as an infant's name. Cadar was a name of power for Blaise, for an entire generation in Gorhaut, given their vivid images of Rosala's father. It was a name of pride, of hope… if the child lived long enough.

Rosala shook her head. "We should not matter so much, he and I," she murmured. "There is too much at stake here."

Behind her, Bertran said quietly, "Sometimes people end up mattering more than one might expect. My lady, the two of you are what is at stake. They will use you to begin the war. They already have."

"Then send us back," she whispered. She was looking at Blaise, not at Bertran.

"It would make no difference," the duke answered quietly. "Not now. They would kill you and keep him and still find a reason to come down on us. They have all the dispossessed of their northlands hungry to be assuaged. This isn't like the old romances: Elienna carried off to Royaunce and an army going after her. This is pure politics now, the hard game of nations. My lady Rosala, Arbonne is the last clause, if you will, of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge."

Blaise, closely watching her, saw the handsome, intelligent features accept the truth of Bertran's words. She knew as much about these things as Ariane or Lucianna, or indeed, he and Bertran. She always had. There were tears still on her cheeks, revealed by the firelight; awkwardly, regretting how difficult such gestures seemed to be for him, he brought up a hand and brushed them away. He wished he were more graceful, more at ease with himself. He said, "You owe no homage to me, Rosala."

She looked again as if she would protest, but in the end said only, "I may thank you for the flower?"

Blaise found that he could smile. "I would expect you to."

Bertran laughed quietly. Rosala, a second later, returned the smile tremulously, but then she lowered her face into her hands.

"How can we speak thus?" she cried. "They burned women tonight. Because of me. They never even knew who I was and they were taken from their beds and raped by Ademar's corans and—say nothing, I know they were! — and then they were burned alive. With all that the two of you know, will you tell me how I am to live with that? I can hear them screaming now."

Blaise opened his mouth and closed it. He looked past her at Bertran, whose eyes were shadowed and dark with the fire behind him. The duke said nothing either. With all that the two of you know. He knew nothing, in the face of this. There were no words he could think of to say.

So he spoke her name. What was it about the speaking of a name? Slowly he brought up his arms again and gently took her head between his hands and, leaning forward, he kissed her on the brow. He wished there were more he could do, but there didn't seem to be. Women had been burned tonight, on a pyre of his father's long dreaming. Men had been slain and mutilated. He, too, could hear the screaming.

"In the morning… " he said roughly. "We will all be stronger in the morning." Lame words, an empty truth. It was this night that needed dealing with. He looked over at the duke again for a moment and then rose and left the room. Bertran would be better at this, he thought, than he himself would be. There was less history here for the duke, he knew women so much better. There was an ache inside Blaise, though, walking from her chamber.

Oh, Ranald, he thought; said it aloud, actually, softly in the empty corridor. She might even have made a man of you, this one, if she had been allowed. His brother had been at Aubry tonight. Blaise was nearly certain that Ranald wouldn't have wanted to be, but that didn't matter, did it? He had been there.

Heavy with burdens, of past and future both, Blaise suddenly stopped and stood very still. A child had cried out in a room behind him. He listened but there was no other sound. A cry in a dream that must have been. Cadar's.

Did new-born infants dream? Blaise didn't know. He only knew that he could not turn back, could not now, if ever, ask Rosala the question in his heart. It doesn't matter, he told himself. It makes no difference at all to anything.

A lie, of course, but the sort of lie that lets one carry on.

By the time she reached the top of the stairway and saw the guards outside the door, Lisseut was already regretting she had come. She had no business here, no claim to this man's attention, especially so late at night after he had been seriously wounded in combat. She didn't even know exactly what she wanted to do, or say, if he should happen to be still awake, and should happen to receive her. Someday, she thought despairingly, she really was going to have to absorb her mother's so-often-repeated lesson and accept that one did not always have to follow the path lit by impulse and first reactions.