“We women do not have that choice,” she said. “All the swords we have must be borrowed.”

“Those,” he said, thinking of his fingers grasping her face while fury ran like a grief-dark river through his mind, “must be danger enough.”

She shrugged. “But I do not know of this conspiracy you speak. If someone wants to murder the monster, I must, of course, support them. I’ve found no one brave enough to try it yet, though.” As she spoke, she darted the smallest of looks at the folded missive on her writing table, and then quickly away.

Aramis was almost absolutely sure that she was lying about knowing nothing of a conspiracy. And yet, he was also almost sure he had seen something like surprise quickly followed by relief in her eyes when he’d mentioned the conspiracy. Surprise because he knew it? Relief because he didn’t know her part in it?

“I’d take care, milady,” he said. “Your correspondence with the Queen has been intercepted, and the Cardinal is sure it betrays a conspiracy against him.”

“His eminence thinks that the fact I still breathe, never mind my being in the same city as her Majesty, is a conspiracy against himself. It is all very silly.”

“Perhaps so, but remember he has the power to separate your head from your neck, and that’s a danger too large to court. Take care, my lady.”

“I always take care. I will see you the day after tomorrow, D’Herblay, since you anticipated our meeting today.”

It was so clearly a dismissal, he could not help but take it. On his way out, passing the table, he managed to cast a glance on the name on that missive, and was startled to find the name and styling of her Majesty’s illegitimate half-brother, Cesar.

The Spider’s Web; Where Old Enemies Are Much Like Old Friends; The Loyalty of a Worthy Man

“SIT down, Monsieur le Comte,” Rochefort said. He had led him into an office that was the exact, if poorer, replica, of his master’s. Where Richelieu ’s study was surrounded by a profusion of bookcases, each filled with leather bound volumes with gilded edges and covers, this one had only two bookcases. And where Richelieu ’s chairs were majestically carved and ornamented, Rochefort’s-while looking quite comfortable-were undeniably utilitarian affairs. His office also lacked a writing desk. What it had in its place was a sword, mounted on the wall, a sword that looked much like Athos’s ancestral sword, mounted on his own wall.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Athos said. “You might know it, and the Cardinal might know it, but other than courting my vengeance if you reveal it, there is nothing you can earn by letting me know you have my secret. I don’t use the name. What I have done has darkened it forever. Perhaps some yet unborn La Fere can resume it with pride, but I can never. So long as I live, that name must remain unknown.”

“Or at least until the crown has forgotten the small matter of your wife,” Rochefort said, casually, shrugging. “That’s normally why people take the uniform, isn’t it? To serve a while until one’s crimes are forgotten and the King owes one enough he’d never dream of punishing them. And then one can return to one’s former life, untouched.”

Athos felt a muscle work on the side of his jaw. “Do not mention… the lady. I committed no crime,” he said. “But as for returning…” He shrugged. “There are events and… and decisions that alter one forever. I don’t think I would be the best custodian for my lands or my people.”

Rochefort said nothing to this, simply sat down and joined his hands on his lap. “You’re not going to require,” he said, “that I call you Athos, are you? It is a demmed silly name. A demon, wasn’t he?”

“A mountain,” Athos said. “A mountain in Armenia on which a famous monastery is set.”

“A monastery!” Rochefort said, with every sign of alarm. “Are you then, like your friend who calls himself Aramis, merely wearing the uniform of the King’s musketeers until you can exchange it for the habit of a priest or a monk?”

“I?” Athos said, almost in shock. “Heaven forbid. I hope I have as much faith as the next man, but if I find myself inadequate to care for my lands or my people, how much more inadequate am I to look after God’s affairs? No. I’ll remain myself. The name is just… what it is.”

Rochefort shrugged. “Those of us who serve the Cardinal,” he said, “are not ashamed to do it under our own names.”

“Perhaps,” Athos said, “because you had nothing left to lose.” And let the idea sink in, seeing the sting of it at the back of Rochefort’s eye, even as the man looked away. Rochefort was, as Athos knew, as noble as himself-a man from an ancient family.

They’d been on the opposite sides of the secret war between King and Cardinal for so many years that the two of them knew each other as well as old friends might. Two things divided them beyond their opposing loyalties-which either considered inexplicable-that Rochefort was willing to stoop to the most dishonorable actions in pursuit of his master’s aim; and that Athos had no expectations, ever, of regaining the honors he had lost, while Rochefort was hoping to rebuild his domain and the fortune his ancestors had squandered.

“His eminence says you have agreed to work for him on this matter of the… conspiracy,” Rochefort said, politely.

“On this matter only and only because he’s holding Mousqueton, Monsieur Porthos’s servant, as a hostage to this.”

“I understood you offered,” Rochefort said, drily.

“One offers, when one is compelled,” Athos answered with equal dryness. “I do not want the boy harmed. You know Porthos. He took to the boy as though he were his own son.” He held back from saying that Porthos had already lost one son. Not that he wasn’t sure Richelieu knew this. There were very few things in France that escaped the attention of the éminence grise. But either Rochefort knew it and it didn’t bear mentioning-or he didn’t know it, and Athos would spare Porthos’s pride. “It would be devastating to lose him.”

Rochefort raised an eyebrow, “Is he perhaps, in fact-?”

“Not that I know, or Porthos knows,” Athos said.

“Or find it necessary to tell me?”

Athos shrugged. No use making Rochefort and Richelieu think that their hostage was, in fact, more important than he was. “That I know,” he said, “Porthos met him when he came to Paris. I understand Mousqueton tried to relieve Porthos of some of his possessions and… Well, you know Porthos.”

“Mostly I know his prowess in duel, but yes. I have heard rumors about Monsieur Porthos’s soft heart.”

Athos inclined his head. He supposed that there were rumors about all of them and that somewhere, if not actually written down, in the Cardinal’s hand, there was a list of their weaknesses-Porthos’s soft heart and his vanity; Aramis’s faith and his inability to stay away from the fair sex; D’Artagnan’s tendency to leap before he looked and his romanticism and Athos’s-he paused. He knew himself well enough to realize he had faults aplenty. But he was at a loss to choose which of them would be the fatal one. His drinking? His reluctance to deal with any women at all? Or his shattered and embittered heart, forever burdened with the sense of guilt for having killed his wife. She might have been a criminal and her death an execution, but in the dark of night, Athos stared dry-eyed into the darkness and suspected very much that he’d made a mistake and slain the only woman he’d ever love, the woman whose memory still haunted his every moment.

“So you offered to help us with this conspiracy to murder the Cardinal,” Rochefort said, suddenly businesslike, as though something in Athos’s expression had scared him. “And I think perhaps you should know what we know for a fact and… and what his eminence fears.”

Athos did not say that his eminence’s fears might have very little to do with reality. He knew that this was probably a slander. The Cardinal was many things, but none of them was either coward or insane. In fact, he was-always, in Athos’s experience-realistic and exact and fully aware of the truth of a situation, no matter how much he chose to distort it in his favor. Instead, he settled himself, with his hands folded on his lap, and waited.