“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m relieved to hear it was nothing more.” He smiled again and started toward the tower stairs. “Good day, Archminister.”

“Good day.”

He let her get almost all the way to her door before calling to her again. “I was on my way to the kitchen,” he said. “I didn’t eat before we spoke with the king. Would you care to join me?”

Paegar saw her hesitate. She even took a step back in his direction, before stopping herself.

“Thank you, High Minister. It’s kind of you to ask.” She paused again, chewing her lip. One might have thought he had asked her to leave Kearney and serve the emperor of Braedon. “I really should return to my quarters, though,” she said. “I’ve a message to the duke of Tremain that I need to compose. Perhaps another time?”

It was just the response he expected. The only surprise was that she gave his offer so much thought.

“Of course, Archminister. Another time.”

He turned away and descended the stairs, hearing her door open and close as he did. Only then did he allow himself a grin. To anyone watching, it would have seemed an insignificant encounter, a meaningless invitation politely refused. Paegar knew better, however. He had seen her waver as she weighed his proposal. He had seen her cheeks color slightly when she asked if they might sup together another time. She was starved for friendship and he had offered her sustenance. It would still take time, but already he felt certain that he had her. The greatest danger lay not in anything she might do, but rather in his own zeal. He couldn’t rush this. She was lonely, to be sure, but she was also clever. He risked all by trying to ingratiate himself too quickly. Still, he had already begun to plan their next encounter, feeling certain that he could build on this one.

“Let the Weaver come,” he whispered, crossing the castle courtyard to the kitchen tower. “I have a prize for him.”

Chapter Eight

Kentigern, Eibithar

Aindreas stood atop the east wall of the castle gazing out over the city of Kentigern and the open land beyond its walls. The late-morning sun shone upon him from a sky of clearest blue, but it offered little warmth in the cold, steady wind sweeping across the face of the tor.

Beside him, Ennis, his youngest child and sole heir, kicked at the stone wall with a booted foot, making the barrel on which he stood wobble noisily. He was almost too big to stand on it anymore, though he wasn’t yet tall enough to see over the wall without it.

“If you don’t stop that kicking, you’re liable to fall,” Aindreas said.

The boy had never fallen before, of course, and he did this every time they walked the walls together. But Ioanna would have expected him to say something, and she would have his head on a pike if the boy did manage to hurt himself. When a mother lost one child, she grew ever more protective of those who remained.

“Yes, Father,” Ennis said. He stopped kicking, but almost immediately began hopping from one foot to the other.

The duke could do nothing but smile. It was something he would have done as a child. Not surprising, really, since the boy favored him in almost every other way. He was bigger than most boys two or three years older than he, and his red hair, grey eyes, and round face were so like Aindreas’s that even the castle guards had taken to calling him the Little Duke.

“Do you see him yet, Father?” the boy asked, sounding a bit more impatient than the last time he asked.

“Actually, I do,” the duke said, marking the progress of a small company of riders on the road leading from Kentigern Wood to the city.

Ennis looked up at him, a smile brightening his ruddy face. “Really?”

Aindreas nodded and pointed toward the road. “See for yourself.”

The boy rested his hands on the top of the wall and stared out at the riders. “I can see two flags,” the said, “but I can’t make out what’s on them.”

“There’s a golden stallion on the red one. That’s the banner of Thorald. And the blue one bears the crest of Shanstead, crossed swords over a rising sun.”

“Which rider is the thane?” Ennis asked.

“It’s hard to say from here. Probably the one riding just behind the men with the banners.”

The boy looked up at his father, squinting against the sun. “Do you think he’ll liance us?”

Aindreas couldn’t help but grin. “Do you mean, Do I think he’ll form an alliance with us?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.”

Aindreas stared down at the riders again. “I don’t know. Marston isn’t the duke yet, and he can’t do anything until he is. But I wouldn’t have asked him here if I didn’t think there was a possibility.”

“Does he like the people who killed Brienne?”

The duke eyed the boy briefly, wondering whether to correct this as well. Ennis wasn’t yet ten, but he was a bright boy, wise beyond his years. Perhaps he was ready to understand a more subtle explanation for Marston’s visit.

“It was just one man who killed Brienne, boy.”

“Lord Tavis.”

Aindreas nodded and tried to say more, but the words stuck in his throat at the thought of his daughter.

“But you hate his father, too. And the king. I’ve heard you speaking of it with Villyd and the prelate.”

The boy missed little of what went on around him. He’d make a good duke.

“Yes, I hate Javan of Curgh, and though I wouldn’t say that I hate Kearney, I do believe that he betrayed us.”

“How?”

“By giving asylum to that Curgh demon, and by turning Tobbar against me before I even had a chance to speak with him.”

He glanced down again to find the boy staring at him, a puzzled look on his face. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this after all.

“What’s asylum?”

“It’s when a noble gives protection to someone. Kearney guarded the boy after he escaped our prison and refused to return him to us.”

Ennis frowned. “Why? Didn’t he like Bnenne?”

Aindreas almost ended the conversation there. He didn’t want to have to admit the rest. But he was a duke and a father, and if the boy was to hear some of it, he had to hear all of it.

“Kearney doesn’t believe Tavis killed her,” he said. “Javan and his son claim it was someone else, and the king believes them.”

“That’s why you hate them.”

He didn’t miss anything. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

Ennis nodded, facing the road once again. “That’s why I hate them, too.”

The duke placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and together they watched the riders approach the city gates. Once Marston and his company were inside the city, Aindreas and the boy left the wall and descended to the castle’s inner ward.

“Go tell your mother the thane of Shanstead has arrived,” Aindreas said.

“She won’t want to see him. She never wants to see anyone.”

The duke winced inwardly. Ennis was right about this as well. Since Bnenne’s death, Ioanna had hardly left her chambers, other than to pray in the cloister or take a brief walk through the castle gardens. In recent turns she had shown some signs of emerging from the darkness that gripped her, but the improvement often seemed painfully slow, like trying to see the movement of the moons as they arced through the night sky. At least she now managed to smile with Ennis and his remaining sister; at times Aindreas even heard her laughing.

“Tell her anyway,” Aindreas said. “She’ll want to know.”

The boy shrugged and hurried off, leaving the duke to greet his guests. He had thought to do so alone, but a moment later he was joined by Villyd Temsten, his swordmaster, who led several hundred soldiers into the ward.

“One of the tower guards told me they had arrived,” the man called to him. “I thought you’d want me here.”

Aindreas grinned. He didn’t trust many men anymore-he would never trust a white-hair again-but those who remained still served him well. “Thank you, Villyd.”