Ackal was still talking, but only when he coughed, spattering the front of his robe with tiny drops of blood was Tol jerked from his tangled thoughts.

“I am Your Majesty’s Champion. What can I do to help you?” he said earnestly.

Ackal dabbed at his lips with a swatch of white silk. “Was I not just saying?” Though not an old man, the emperor smiled like one, lips tight together, wrinkles piling up around his fevered eyes.

“Stay by me, Tolandruth. Take rooms in the palace. I feel that with you close by, my powers will soon return.”

Tol’s heart beat faster. Here was an admirable compromise. His presence might ward off dangers, magical and temporal. And he would be near Valaran-

The emperor’s next words shocked Tol to his very core.

“My wife would be glad of your company.”

Tol couldn’t speak, could barely control his expression. At last he said, “Wife, Majesty?”

“Yes, Valdid’s daughter. You two are old friends, are you not? She will be happy to have you about. My other wives are not kind to her, despite my admonitions.”

Tol could think of nothing at all to say, but fortunately the emperor was going on.

“You two have been friends a long time, I know. She taught you reading, yes?” Tol nodded dumbly. “Yes. In spite of what most people think, there is nothing that goes on in the Inner City about which I do not know. From charming secrets to vicious gossip, I hear it all.”

At that moment Tol realized Ackal must know about him and Valaran; he knew and was not outraged. Tol’s heart was pounding so hard, he felt it must be audible to the emperor.

“Sometimes I believe the gossip,” Ackal said quietly, “and sometimes I don’t. When I assumed the mantle of Ergoth, I learned a most important fact.”

Prompted, Tol said, “What is that, Majesty?”

“What the emperor wishes to be true is true.”

Their eyes met, and Tol understood. He’d always blamed his ten-year exile on Mandes’s lies and Nazramin’s treachery, but the truth, it seemed, was more complicated. The sorcerer had stolen his honor for the destruction of XimXim, and Nazramin had undermined his glory for winning the war in Hylo-but it had been Crown Prince Amaltar who kept him away from Daltigoth for a decade. Away from the city, and away from Valaran. He could have had them both punished for their infidelity, but he needed Tol, needed him the way a warrior needs a fine sword to battle his enemies, and Amaltar was genuinely fond of Valaran.

Now the stakes were higher than a husband’s honor. Ackal IV needed Tol to keep him alive and on the throne of Ergoth. If that meant turning a blind eye to the fact his wife and his champion were lovers, so be it. It was cold-blooded reasoning, but Tol didn’t care. A tremendous burden had been raised from his soul. He knelt before Ackal IV.

“I am your man, Majesty. Body, soul, flesh, and blood, I am yours,” he said, lowering his head.

“Your soul you may keep. The rest I can use.”

The Rumbold Villa was soon vacant again. Egrin and his men had departed for Juramona, and Tol and Kiya took a small suite in the palace’s south wing.

The transition was not an easy one. Kiya’s melancholy over her separation from Miya deepened. She took to drinking too much and sleeping too little, haunting the kitchens and servants’ quarters, where she felt more at home than among the haughty courtiers. As for Tol, access to Valaran and the emperor’s tacit approval did not guarantee a new blossoming of love. Resuming their affair, once a secret and dangerous passion, seemed somehow sordid and selfish. When they met, talk was difficult, the atmosphere awkward and strained.

“I’m not that impetuous girl any longer,” Valaran confessed. “I’m not seventeen and full of fire.”

She and Tol were seated on a marble bench in one of the many gardens, large and small, scattered throughout the imperial dwelling. This one was tiny, located on a narrow terrace, but a favorite of Valaran’s for the autumn crocuses blooming there now.

Staring down at the purple flowers in her hand, she added, “For ten years I tried to purge you from my thoughts, to forget how it felt to love you, to touch you. I can’t in the space of a few score days go back to the way I was long ago!”

Tol had never stopped loving her, hut he understood her quandary. So much had happened while they were apart, they had become different people. They no longer knew each other.

“This feels like the end, not a new beginning,” she murmured.

He stood quickly, needing to move. The terrace allowed only ten steps from one side to the other. He paced back and forth several times, then halted in front of her.

“I can’t give you up,” he said. “Any more than I can give up a hand or a leg! “

She flushed and looked away. “I never wanted to leave you.”

“Then don’t!” He dropped beside her again and took her hand. “We can begin again,” he whispered. “There’s been too much longing between us since I returned. That will stop.” Her expression was skeptical. “I shall court you.”

She almost laughed, but the serious glint in his eyes stopped her.

“Tol, we’re not children any more.”

“No, and I won’t act like one.” He released her hand but the resolve in his face never faltered.

Her doubts began to waver. “We’d have to be careful. Even if my husband knows about us, we cannot flaunt his honor.”

“Of course not. We’ll be as discreet as owls.”

Now she did laugh. “Is that some rustic expression?”

The mirth was balm to the ache in his heart. “Just so. Owls pass their lives shielded by darkness. Stands to reason they’re discreet.”

The dimple he’d long missed reappeared when she smiled. “I’ll write that down.” Her light expression faded, replaced by a thoughtful frown. Her eyes grew distant. “I could collect an entire book’s worth of unknown and forgotten similes-”

“Later,” he said, and leaned closer.

She recoiled a little, unsure of his intentions, but he only reached into the leather case at her feet. She never went anywhere without her collection of books. He drew out a short, tightly wound scroll and held it out to her.

“Read to me?”

By such small steps they learned to know each other again. They met often, but to no set schedule, in out-of-the-way corners of the great, rambling palace. In time they even dared the ghosts of their past and met by the centaur fountain, in the grove below the Tower of High Sorcery-the place they’d first found love many years before. Valaran would read to Tol, or they would talk about the events that had transpired while they were apart. Tol described the campaign against Tarsis. He spared her nothing, from the bloodiest battles, to the final victory, to his dalliance with Hanira.

He feared she might be jealous of this last, but Valaran shrugged off such a notion.

“I’d be more worried if you professed celibacy,” she said. “This woman interests me. She wields power, you say?”

“She’s a syndic, one of the city’s leaders.”

“I see the Tarsans are ahead of us in some ways. I’d like to meet her someday.”

Tol found the prospect alarming. He felt equal to either woman separately; together, they would put him at a distinct disadvantage.

The golden phase of autumn was quickly over, yielding the land to the drying, dying days before winter. The harvest was good; for the first time in many years the empire basked in prosperity and peace.

However, all was not quiet beyond the borders of Ergoth. From the east came odd rumors of invasion and migration. Tribes of nomadic humans and centaurs moved west, displaced by other tribes, who in turn had been driven from their homes by distant, vaguely described invaders. Muddled tales of “foreigners” arriving on the northeast coast reached Daltigoth. Those in power weren’t worried. Such migrations did happen. Opinion in the capital was that dark-skinned seafarers had come down from the northern ocean, driven there by storms or migratory pressures of their own. Ridiculous stories of the invaders being “monsters” were not believed. Beaten people often claimed to have been overwhelmed by supernatural forces.