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The audio is too quiet on this one, best listened to at max volume!

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The last few audio chapters to follow, with apologies for the long failure to deliver them.

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They had argued long into the night, and when he awoke with a brutal headache and a weight on every limb Elfred’s first thought was that he must have drunk much, more more than he remembered.

Drinking was a natural means of defense, faced with the press of arguments that Viza and Lomaz, his lover and his friend, kept marshaling to prove that he shouldn’t obey his brother’s summons, that he shouldn’t return to the empire — that he should instead leave Antiala for the worlds that opened southward, down the Mersana or over the mountains, worlds of wealth and plenty, worlds his brother couldn’t reach.

For him to seek to escape his brother was, of course, an insane idea, which was why their arguments weren’t working, why he was bound to ride northward in just three days time — after a final court appearance, a ceremonial goodbye — to join whatever imperial escort would be coming down to meet him in Argosa.

Certainly it was too insane an idea to broach with Welsten, who was organizing their departure, who would ride north with him in obedience to Padrec’s imperial command.

Except that Welsten was one source, one of several, for the tidings that had followed the initial summons home — the wild reports and wilder rumors borne by birds and travelers from the distant north, the tales of assassination and civil war, of his sister and his brother meeting in open battle, of plots and counterplots encompassing Argosa, Brethony, the empire as a whole. And it was quite obvious that the adjutant had slowed the pace of his planning as each new bit of intelligence arrived.

At first they were leaving within a tenday, but then the timeline kept being extended, past one winter feastday and another — initially with talk about the risks of winter weather, eventually with comments about the need for “certainty” about the situation in Argosa before they placed Elfred’s imperial person in any kind of danger.

From the reports they had now, the iron duchess’s city currently … well, simmered was the word most often used, with two occupying legions in its streets. Which was not ideal for their journey, not ideal at all, but they couldn’t wait forever, Welsten had hired more men to supplement his bodyguard, and it was finally time to leave —

— yes, time to leave, the mother of his unborn child told him, the mother (she claimed certainty on the matter of the child’s sex) of his firstborn son, time to leave here and get somewhere where your brother can’t find us.

We’re so close, Lomaz said, so close to power that puts all your brother’s legions in the shade, and you want to put yourself in his power, not knowing what really happened to your father and your sister? Put yourself, his last remaining rival —

— a rival with something he doesn’t have, Viza said, a son and heir waiting to be born …

— put yourself fully in his power, the brother he hasn’t seen in ten years, the brother with a foreign taint, and if half the stories are true what do you think will happen? Maybe you’ll be kept alive until he marries and has an heir, but if he’s this ruthless you’ll exist on sufferance, you’ll be locked away somewhere at best, he won’t want any rallying points, any rivals who could actually be emperor –

— and Lomaz has friends, she interjected, he has friends everywhere, you can move freely through the river cities, wait to see what happens in the north, you can always return later, you need information, our child needs safety …

Her story had changed, that was the thing he found himself considering as they worked on him. The tale of a powerful father or a spurned husband-to-be who would pursue her if they could, the sense of fear that had supposedly brought her this far north … all that was oddly absent when she talked now about the possibilities lying south of them. When he pressed her, once, she said something about how much time had passed, and emphasized that she was not suggesting that they actually enter the High King’s dominions … and of course, if her purpose was to marry him, and surely that was her purpose now, then a marriage to a Narsil prince would be something she could bring back to the world of her childhood, something that would more than redeem her great escape. So maybe that was the subtext of her airy indifference to perils she had previously treated with the utmost gravity.

But beyond that there was still a sense, as she and Lomaz talked together, of ownership over the southern world, a confidence in their own capacities that went beyond what a late-born noble son and a concubine’s daughter ought to have between them.

Because whatever Elfred brought with him if he went south, he would not bring any great power save his name, and that would be a complicated thing to trade upon. So why were they so certain, so intensely certain, that they would all prosper greatly together in Jasipar or Seraphport, far from the actual source of Montair strength? Was it just a version of their shared confidence in the magic, borrowed and transposed to his situation, to Viza’s pregnancy, to Lomaz’s desire to have an imperial prince as part of his magical experiments?

And was that Lomaz’s actual desire? With Viza at least the pregnancy explained her intensity, but his friend seemed equally invested, beyond what either affection or self-interest might suggest …

But holding these thoughts as they debated with him and he resisted, he also held the thought — or the fear — or the completely rational supposition that they might be right about what waited for him in Rendale. In which case he would remember his choices now, his inevitable-seeming return northward, the way a bird on the altar of sacrifice remembered its fatal flight into the net.

Those fears were the last thing he remembered of the prior evening — the servant refilling their glasses, Viza talking about some new rumor that made his sister out to be alive and fleeing southward, while his own mind reimagined some of his unhappy memories of the north as prophecies, where his last few winters of life would be spent sick and miserable, hacking his lungs out in some drafty fortress, supervised by someone crueler than Welsten, surviving only until his brother proved capable of putting a child in some fortunate noblewoman …

… those thoughts, then the curtain, the dark, the very depths of something deeper than an ordinary sleep. And now this strange awakening with a terrible heaviness all over him, the midday sunlight harsh through the open door to the balcony, no servant to attend to him, no sounds from anywhere in the apartments, no Vizalaga beside him …

Somehow he managed to reach his feet, the throb quickening behind his eyes. The door to the bedchamber was open, there was something on the floor, the servant had dropped a pile of clothing, no, someone had collapsed —

He was not a woman, he did not scream, but he gasped for breath when he realized what was lying there, half-inside his bedchamber door — a door that wasn’t open so much as broken from its hinges, the inner bolt torn away, and across the threshold sprawled Welsten, dead and staring, still in his smallclothes, a dagger’s hilt protruding from near his armpit, blood down his chest, blood everywhere, blood especially all over the black-haired man who lay facedown, clutching the adjutant’s legs, as thought they had wrestled together into death.

Gasp — he stumbled past them — gasp — into the parlor where there were three more dead, two men sprawled in the wreckage of the chairs with weapons near them — gasp — and the servant who had filled their cups the night before sitting stupidly with his eyes closed and his throat cut in the corner. There was still no sound except his own pants as his eyes jumped crazily around the room, jumped to the door out onto the landing, which was not broken-down but innocently open …

Then he heard the thumping on the stairs and before he had time to find a weapon they both burst through the half-open door, Viza and Lomaz, the big blonde man with a sword buckled on, that was a novel sight, and while Lomaz paused and gaped at the scene she threw herself sobbing across the room, threw herself on Elfred —

“Oh Mithriel thank you Mithriel sweet Mithriel you’re alive, I couldn’t wake you, I couldn’t wake you, they were all dead when I woke, it was just like this and the soldiers are all dead, the guard outside and the soldiers in the other apartment, their throats were cut in their beds, something in the wine, something in the wine, I’ve never slept so heavily, I didn’t know what to do, I went for Lomaz, I brought him, oh Elfred …”

“He saved you both,” Lomaz said numbly, staring still at the tableau. “Your man Welsten, it looks like he fought all three of them …”

“Something in the wine,” Viza said again. “They drugged us all. They would have killed us all. Killed our child. Killed us while he slept.”

“I’ve never slept so heavily,” their friend said. “Never never … I was barely awake an hour when Viza came pounding on my door. My head feels like there are hammers working …”

The hammering was slightly easier in Elfred’s skull, and his breath was likewise more controlled. He gently took Viza’s arms from his shoulders and turned back to the corpses in the bedchamber doorway.

“He’s dressed for sleep,” he said to them, looking at his adjutant, his friend. “Welsten — he must have come awake when everyone else was still drugged, somehow …”

“Awake enough to interrupt their plan,” Lomaz agreed, as Elfred bent and turned over the man who had died grappling with Welsten.

The face was nondescript but it didn’t look southern. The coloring made the prince think of the servants at High House who came from Ysan.

Lomaz had his blade out and was prodding gingerly at the other corpses, as though he feared that one might come to life. He lifted a dead hand to expose a knife underneath, a blade with a worked handle —

“… do you recognize this, Elfred?” He lifted it carefully, held it out. “It looks like …”

It looked like a falcon, because it was a falcon. The blade of a Falconguardsman, stained with blood.

“Your brother did this,” Viza breathed. “Easier to kill you here than in the north.”

“We don’t know that,” Lomaz said. “We don’t know anything yet. There could be plots within plots, some kind of deception, one of the factions here making a play …”

“Do you think that whoever ordered this intended to leave dead bodies and discarded daggers for you to find?” she cried. “We are all meant to be gutted in our sleep! We were never meant to see their faces or their blades!”

“We don’t know all that,” he said again, shaking his head, still looking at the dagger in his hand. “I don’t know – they could have planned to leave the dagger in the prince’s breast, a token …”

Eflred suddenly remembered swordfights with his brother, wooden blades clacking against each other in the practice yard, in the fields above High House. He closed his eyes, squeezed away the bloody horror, tried to call Padrec’s face back into his mind.

“… one thing I’m sure about,” Lomaz said, “is that whoever ordered this has eyes on this square, this building. They’ll know their plan failed; maybe they know already. This place won’t be safe. We can go to my apartment …”

“The whole city won’t be safe,” Viza said. “We’d need to ask for sanctuary in the palace, and even then, would we really be protected? Does the king want to protect a Narsil prince his brother the emperor wants to kill? And if they know where we are, if your brother knows we know he means to kill you, then they’ll want to act again soon. We need to be somewhere they can’t find us. By tonight. Soon.”

He couldn’t see his brother’s face. Each time he tried he conjured something different — a version of his own face, pale and haunted; an archangel’s face, stern, demanding; Welsten’s face, bloodied, staring. His mother, he could still see his mother’s face. But Padrec’s face was lost.

He looked at his hands, bloodied just from touching the bodies for a moment. He looked at his lover: at her belly (was there a hint of a swell now?), at her frantic eyes (but how much of her hysteria was real?). He looked at the dead servant. He looked at Welsten, desperately wishing the adjutant was still alive to tell him what to do.

Viza reached for him. “Elfred, as you love me, as you love yourself, you must see what we have to do.”

What was the verse Welsten quoted to him? Judge a man … what was it? Judge a man by how he travels the road the angels open for his feet?

Not quite right, but it would have to do. He didn’t trust her but there was no one left to trust, no choice better than the one being offered to him by the bloody hands of fate.

“We have to go south,” he said, and he saw her exhale, a great gasp of relief.

Lomaz’s eyes were bright but wary. “South to where? How far?”

“As far we have to go,” the prince of Narsil told him. “As far as Mandor, if it comes to that.”

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When she awoke she was cold. But then every wakening was cold, now, even wrapped up in blankets, everyone lying back to back in miserable intimacy around the embers of their fire. The cliff was above them, while pink dawn was infusing the trees further down the slope. Sitting up in the growing light she thought she could make out the path they had followed down the afternoon before, a track cut into the cliff that zigged and zagged, not too steeply, but so narrowly that only a fool would attempt the descent in ice, in winter.

Only a fool, or people with nowhere to go but forward, nothing behind them except doom.

Her cloak was torn at the fringes, filthy everywhere. Her skirts were fraying. She would need new clothes soon enough — except that how would she get them? Wander up to the first castle in Ysan, knock at the door, and ask if they had any appropriate dresses to spare for the princess of All Narsil?

In her dreams she sometimes found herself once more dressed in finery, back in the Castle, presiding in the great hall over some crowded ball or revel. Sometimes her father was beside her; sometimes Maibhygon. Sometimes the chair beside her seemed to be occupied by a stranger, but she found it difficult to look sideways and see his face.

There were many dancers in the dream, circling and circling; sometimes they were the familiar faces of her courtiers, sometimes they were masked, foxes and birds and bears and cats. In every dream she sensed that Paulus bar Merula was out there among the dancers, hiding his smirk in the crowd or behind a mask.

In one dream she managed to turn sideways to see the mysterious figure beside her, only to find that he too wore a mask — a stag’s face, antlered, that turned to meet her eyes …

“Are you all right, princess?” It was Aeden, offering his hand to help her as she wobbled briefly. She let him lift her up and out of the dream-memory, back into the harsh reality that was written on his face — the deep circles, the sharp features turned to gauntness, the change in just a few short days.

They were all changed, all of them. And if the angels favored them — something she sincerely doubted — the journey had only just begun.

Around her the makeshift camp was being picked up, Beren chivvying them, the pink light turning gold now, spreading like gilt over the forest. The Brethon knight, Baerys, was with the horses. Maibhygon was helping Guernys, as always now. Alrend was bending over Fidelity, checking her fever and her pulse.

She was about to cross to Beren, to speak to him about the likelihood that they would reach any town or settlement this day, when Alrend rose and cried out —

“She wakes! Highness, she’s awake!”

They gathered swiftly, like a small flock of birds, but hovered back to let the princess be the one to crouch beside Fidelity — who had propped herself up from her makeshift bed, plainly not just awake but alert.

Her veil was now as ragged as everything else in their company, trailing strands and threads that left her face mostly exposed. They had left it in place out of respect even as they tried to tend to her these last few days. But as Alsbet bent, Fidelity lifted the veil fully, threw it back, her eyes meeting the princess’s without any mediation for the first time.

“Highness,” she said, clearly, strongly. “will you release me?”

“Release you? Sister, you have been six days unconscious, you are not a prisoner …

Fidelity shook her head. “I don’t mean that I’m a prisoner, I mean … when I took my first vows they said only the emperor could release me from them. But a princess must have the right too, there is no emperor now, is there, and anyway you are, you were his daughter. And I never took my final vows — please, highness, I beg you to release me. The angels have chosen this path for me. I need to be released.”

From her half-sitting position she tried awkwardly to bow her head. Alsbet glanced at the men around her: Alrend had averted his eyes from the sister’s face, as though she had stripped before him, while Aeden was looking at her especially intently, as though recognizing someone whose name he knew but couldn’t quite remember.

“Highness, I need …”

Alsbet’s voice came out more harshly than she meant it. “I am princess of nothing, but in the empire of nothing where I rule, you are released from every vow and you may serve me freely or depart. Now let us help you rise, Fidelity, and see to your health —”

The sister, or former sister, pushed herself up and stood. The others gave her space as she pulled back her hood completely, exposing the hair that was starting to grow in, black around her tonsure.

She looked around at all of them — the soldiers’ faces, the old woman, the Brethons and the Narsils, the prince, Aeden, Alsbet.

“Not Fidelity,” she said. “Rowenna. Rowenna of — of nowhere, same as all of you.”

The victorious Falconguard had set up camp around Dernbridge, where Aengiss accepted the surrender of what remained of Varelis bar Veruna’s army. The Old Hound’s body and the corpses of Berenek Skorshi and Dethferd Rendell were decapitated, and the heads were sent back to Rendale for display. Save for a handful of legionnaires who had fled up one of the gold roads, the rest of the army was made prisoner, Mulias bar Sedura’s men included, awaiting whatever decisions Padrec made. A company was dispatched north to Caldmark, to offer terms of surrender to any Veruna loyalists remaining there, and birds were sent in advance of their progress in the hopes of making the surrender swift and certain.

Padrec reached Dernbridge at dusk on the day of the battle, and there, surrounded by his soldiers and with the scraping of gravediggers’ shovels making a ghastly background noise, the lords of the empire renewed their oath of allegiance to the House of Montair and the crown. It was a custom usually reserved for the coronation, but it seemed appropriate here — appropriate and effective, judging from the sour faces that Jonthen Cathelstan and Eldred Gerdwell wore as they mouthed the time-honored words.

The lords of the empire were sent back to Rendale the next morning, trading places with the women and children of Dernbridge, who had spent a relatively comfortable two nights under the supervision of the Castle chamberlain. But Padrec remained with the army all that day and into the next, resisting the urge to ride north himself, waiting for word from the pursuit of his sister.

He had to wait until close to midday on the third day after the battle, when Paulus bar Merula and five bloodied, bedraggled soldiers stumbled into the Falconguard's camp, with the news that Princess Alsbet and Prince Maibhygon had made good their escape.

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She had fainted but she did not fall. Something fell, a body that no longer quite belonged to her, a sister of Jophiel who was caught by the Bryghalan prince and then borne away with the princess and the others, back toward the bright door and the noise of battle.

Part of Fidelity remained tethered to that fallen form, enough to make her dimly aware of a burning on its neck, a burning in its veins, a jolting feeling as she was lifted up onto horseback. But her true self was still standing in the Dernbridge shrine, where the shadows were suddenly deeper than before, the shapes of people blurrier, the walls and benches less distinct.

She felt a strange calm where a moment before all had been in tumult. Her passions were stilled, her mind somehow entirely unafraid. A group of villagers went by her at a rush; it almost felt like they went through her, headed for the doorway; none of them seemed to take any notice of the blue sister standing in their way.

There was still a small crowd at the far end of the shrine, beyond the altar, but it felt entirely unreal to her gaze. What felt more real was something up above her — a pulsing light, stronger than the sun, that seemed to burn through the frescoes on the ceiling, infusing the figures with a special light, drawing her gaze upward, drawing her upward …

… but then something drew her back, a figure passing her, stark and oddly familiar, moving with brisk purpose despite being completely ill suited to the scene. A fool in motley, checkered black and white, the costume of a revel, yet somehow here in Dernbridge on a day of battle.

He moved like a man late for an appointment, cleaving through the remaining villagers around the altar and then disappearing behind it, following the same route as Paulus bar Merula, down into the crypt.

For some reason she thought of the cardinal in the woods. A moment before she had been stunned and bleeding, wanting nothing but to flee the shrine, and a host of devils couldn’t have driven her in the same direction as her terrible smiling enemy. But her terror had been carried off with whatever version of her body Prince Maibhygon had taken, and the remaining self was cool, unafraid, and more than a little curious. Who was the fool? Where was he going? What was actually down beneath them?

The light still pulsed above her, but there would be time to look up later. She followed where the fool had gone — down the aisle, around the altar, down into the crypt.

The crowd of villagers at the foot of the stairs was packed tightly, a gallery of faces staring up in fear. But they stared unseeing as she passed through them, passed the torches lighting old tombs and monuments, passed the wooden door that stood ajar to let in a shaft of daylight from a different stair, passed from a stone floor to an earthen one, from a higher ceiling to a lower, from the flood of torchlight to its dimming edge.

She didn’t see the fool at first but somehow she knew where he had gone, and finally she saw him, bent in a corner, roots hanging from the earth above his head — and then the nearest torch flickered, dim to dark and back to life, and when the faint light returned he had vanished.

She reached the place where he had knelt. Surrounded by a wall of earth there was the outline of an arch. It was too dim to see the carvings on the stone, or else time had effaced them. The arch itself was not tall enough for anyone to pass without crawling, and in any case it was filled in with dirt that didn’t suggest any kind of passage.

She brushed at it regretfully — the fool must have magic of some kind, and she did not.

But instead of crumbling at her touch the earth simply wasn’t there any more, indeed the entire wall wasn’t there, and she realized that the arch only looked small because it had been half-buried in the earthen floor of the crypt, and buried with it was a flight of steps that seemed to float over an abyss of stars, and far down and far away she saw the fool descending.

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The braziers that ringed the practice yard smelled ghastly all morning and when the fog had burned away and the air had warmed sufficiently, Padrec ordered them extinguished. One of his pages, a thin, freckled boy named Lammen, fetched water from a well in the east bailey and poured it over the flames, sending a curtain of foul smoke rising into the winter sky. The sun climbed high and hot overhead, and the snow melted off the ground and the headless, ivy-mantled statue of Prince Edgeren that watched the practice yard, while Padrec sweated and stripped until finally he fought shirtless as morning ran into afternoon and the Castle waited, its walls and towers ringed with anxious watchers, for tidings from the north.

He sparred with his soldiers, the few men of the Falconguard who had been left behind to guard his life while their comrades fought to save his empire. Padrec’s imperial person presence seemed to awe them into silence, but they fought well, their wooden blades thudding against his, and that was all the Emperor of All Narsil wanted on this morning.

Well, not all. He wanted to pick up a real sword and lead an army into battle — to smell blood and hear the sounds of war again, and to see his enemies fall before him, see the traitors die. But this was not permitted.

My father led armies, he had protested to his council — to Aengiss, really, for Aengiss was the only man who mattered now. I rode beside you in Brethony. Why should this be any different?

He knew the answers, of course. Because they were outnumbered, fighting for the survival of his throne, not the conquest of his enemies; because he had no heir, his brother was far-off and his sister and his uncle fought against him; because even his father had deferred to Aengiss, the great war leader, the terror of the Brethons, the man who had never lost a battle. And above all because this was a great gamble, meeting the rebels in battle outside the walls, and should the gamble fail Rendale and even the Castle would likely fall without a fight, and if it came to that he would need to be well away, galloping south, risking whatever waited at Aldermark or beyond. Leaving him behind was a way of choosing both doors, both options, fight and flight: The Falconguard would fight, and he would wait and be ready to flee if riders came down the lakeshore with news of their defeat.

So yes, he knew the reasons, and he had acquiesced and remained while the Falconguard moved north late the previous afternoon, later than planned because of his sister’s miserable betrayal, but still early enough to make all of Aengiss’s preparations around Dernbridge, the surprises that would win the day if all went well.

If all went well. There it was, the hope of every commander, the whispered prayer of every clever tactician and fearless captain and superstitious soldier on the night before battle, before the long midnight when sleep did not come and the rustling sound of the dark made a man start up, certain that they were here and that they, the silent enemy, would kill him while he slept. And then they did not come, the wind laughed and said softly we will have you . . . we will have you . . . you will be ours tomorrow.

Now tomorrow was today, and Padrec swung his sword and looked down to watch his muscles ripple, and it occurred to him that he was turning soft, that there was flab and gut and sag where he was used to a satisfying suppleness. He didn’t even wear the crown and yet he was growing soft under it already. He found himself thinking of what Caetryn would think if she saw him, if she would be disappointed, if her ambitions for him — not her desire, there was no sign of her desire, he pushed that thought away – imagined him a certain way, the young prince riding to war, not the fleshy pale emperor hiding in his practice yard while Aengiss fought his battles for him.

It was folly but still he wished that Cat were there, on the walls with the other ladies, with the ambassadors and noblemen to old to accept Aengiss’s “invitation” to join the battle — all wishing themselves far away, no doubt, all waiting for a glint on the northward highway, for the thunder of Veruna’s horse.

In his mind’s eye he saw them coming, all through the foggy morning and unseasonably warm afternoon — men in the tabards of the empire, but not his men, coming down the lakeshore, surging over the Castle’s walls like a flood, and he swung his wooden sword and drove his sparring partners back, while the snow melted and fires danced in the smithy, and the headless statue watched him from the west end of the yard.

The sun had passed its low midwinter zenith when the shouting began on the walls, and though Padrec was frightened he tossed his sword away and went to greet the men who came riding down the highway — men who shouted victory, he realized with mounting joy as the postern door was flung open and Dunkan burst in, with other men behind him, and shouldered his way through the crowd to grab his emperor around the neck and face and shout —

“We fucking did it, Padrec! The tricks bloody worked, we turned their flanks and buckled their center, and some of the bastards didn't even fight, and Veruna’s dead and Benfred, and the whole damn lot of them are surrendered or scattered . . . we won, by all the Damned and the Archangels too, we fucking won!!”

There were cheers and more embraces and songs, and the bells of the city began to ring, great joyous peals from the temple and all the little shrines, washing over them as Dunkan told him what had happened, how the men hidden in the village had taken them from the rear and the catapults had worked and Coallen of Ysan had led the charge and Aengiss himself had cut down Dethferd Rendell, and how Mulias bar Sedura wouldn't fight and was begging for mercy, and his men were all prisoners, and so were most of the rest of them, and the others were dead except for a few hundred who took to the hills, and they had won, Rendale was safe, his crown was safe!

Padrec was closer to tears than an emperor could acknowledge, and he shouted to Dunkan —

“What about my sister?”

His friend blinked, as if he hadn’t even thought about the issue, and then replied that she might have fled, but he thought that Paulus had taken some men after her — and that no one could get far with Paulus on their scent.

It was winter, the sky was already growing dark, and the first fireworks blossomed above Matheld's Tower, red and green sunbursts against a deepening blue.

They rode north all that afternoon, along the churned-up highway where Veruna’s army had tramped southward the previous night. They had left their lakeside vantage point when the battle was lost, when they could see the soldiers begin to flee or surrender, and there had been no immediate signs of pursuit as they galloped away north. But Paulus was still out there, and Alsbet was certain that he would have men after them within a few hours, dozens of soldiers with fast horses and sharp swords to cut down her men, the way he had killed Veruna, and her father, and angels knew how many others, all the while wearing that awful, contemptuous smile.

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Getting out of the range of the catapults meant going back up the main row of Dernbridge, all the way back to the town square, where a makeshift hospital had sprung up beside the alder’s house and the sounds of battle were muted compared to the cries of wounded men.

“I want the others down here,” her captain said to Cedrec, gesturing to the inn. “And we need to find our horses. I want us ready to leave in a hurry.”

“Are we losing?” Alsbet said. It couldn’t be, a few catapults couldn’t be a match for all those cheering men, those brave men …

“Not losing yet, not losing yet, but there’s three different captains fighting this battle on our side and we’re just reacting to whatever Aengiss does — no, princess, no, don’t fear, we can win, we should win, but it’s our task to keep you safe, and when things fall apart they can fall apart in a hurry.”

“He’s right,” Maibyghon said softly, then switched to Brethon. “The Skalbarder seems to know his business, but a battle needs a single general, not three. We should be ready to run.”

“Run where?” Alsbet said, and while Cedrec and the Brethon knight, his name was Aerhuinn, headed for the Snow Goose she let her gaze rove around the square, wondering where they had penned Paulus and Arellwen, wondering if the townsfolk were still all inside the shrine —

— and thinking of them, she thought that she should be a princess to all her people if she wanted to angels to smile on her, and she slipped from the saddle, still holding the bare sword, and crossed the hard-packed mud to the shrine’s doors, where two legionnaires stood casually under a crude statue of Raguel.

“Are the people still inside?” she asked, and as they recognized her they reacted with confusion — a salute from one, a sketched bow from the other — and the younger one, blonde hair beneath his helm, nodded and said: “They’re safer inside, m’lady, highness I mean. Old folk and such.”

“What happens if — if the enemy overruns the town?” she said.

“We won’t be guarding the door then,” said the other, his speech Argosan-accented. “They can make their own way like the rest of us if it’s a rout.”

“Can I go in to them?” she asked. “I’ll leave my sword with you.”

“Well, why — ” They exchanged glances. “No need to leave it, highness,” the older one said. “But will your men, will they go with you? It’s crowded inside, we can’t be responsible for your safety …”

“I’m responsible,” said Gavian, looming at her left side, “but this is foolishness. Visit with them once the battle is done, highness, if all is well, but for now when Cedrec brings the others down …”

“When he brings them down I will be back outside,” she said. “I wish to say a prayer with my people, Gavian.”

“Your people need you to be safe,” he snapped at her, but she knew what she was doing, he didn’t need to protect her, and she passed between the soldiers and went through the doors into the shrine.

It was crowded indeed, the air close despite the cold outside, the benches filled with reclining figures. The frescoes on the vault were shadowed — vague angelic figures, Eris and Era, Magaric and the lion, Tophir in Arrabas, even stoical Brasila, the model of female virtue Gavian had urged on her. What light there was spilled through through ceiling apertures to fall around the altar of sacrifice — a simple block surrounded by huddled people, some in cloaks and some in blankets, their low noise diminishing as she entered, bringing more light with her, and heads turned and craned to look.

The alder was with three heavyset men near the chorister benches, and he came to her, recognized her, bowed. One of the other men followed him, the same bodyguard she had seen last night, his cloak a heavy swaddle around his height and breadth.

“Alder …” The name came to her. “Alder Merfen, do your people have everything they need? Angels willing the battle will soon be over, our army gone.”

He looked yet more nervous than in his own house the prior night, his eyes darting to his larger companion — perhaps thinking the bigger man the likeliest protection should the battle reach them here.

“It’s all satisfactory, highness,” he said. “Difficult, of course, but the men — your men — brought in bread and water this morning, and we have blankets from our homes, we lit the altar fire in the night … Angels willing, yes, it will all be over soon.”

“And the children?” she said. “Are they all right?”

“The children, yes, yes …” Something about this made him appear even more anxious, and as her eyes swept the space she realized that she didn’t see many children. How many adults were crowded in — forty, maybe fifty, in a space built for twice that? But maybe that wasn’t surprising, surely some people had hid or fled. And she heard an infant crying, one at least. Maybe the other children were huddled under blankets near the altar …

“They’re fine,” the bigger man said. “Some of them are with their mothers in the crypt.”

There was a faint lilt to his voice — probably Ysani, maybe he’d come to Rendale as a soldier and married into this village.

“There’s a crypt?” Gavian said. He had come in behind her, Maibhygon as well. “Is there more than one way in and out?”

The big man, the maybe-blacksmith, gave him a suspicious look. “Aye, there is. Why might you ask, captain?”

Almost certainly a former soldier if he recognized Gavian’s badge of rank.

“I might ask because if you have to seek shelter there, you’ll want to be ready to flee out one way if the other one gets blocked.” He transferred his gaze to the alder. “The princess wants to see to your folk’s safety, and I want to see to hers — so I’ll tell you now that there are only two guards on the outside of your doors, and if they leave it means the fight is coming toward you, and you’d best either put everyone underground or try to make a run for it with everyone who can run. Do you understand me?”

“Underground, yes,” the alder said. “We have people too old to run, and as for the, the children …” — another glance at his larger companion — “surely honorable men of the Falconguard would not hurt our children.”

“I am certain they would not intend it,” said Maibhygon gravely, “but in battle terrible deeds are often done by men who barely know what they’re doing.”

The shrine door opened again behind them, a spill of light, and turning they saw Cedrec and the veiled Fidelity, who came quickly together to join them.

“The rest are gathering outside,” Cedrec told Gavian. “The sister wanted to join the princess in her prayers.”

“Not sure we have time for those,” said Gavian, as Alsbet noticed the other two big men shouldering their way across the space toward them, each almost a twin of the soldier-turned-Dernbridge-man beside them, large and grim-faced with cloaks that reached the floor.

She sensed the people on the benches and around the altar looking at them; it was strange that only the alder had come to her, and none of the town’s women, who surely needed comfort and might take some from seeing a princess in the midst.

“Princess, can we go to the altar,” Fidelity said softly. “A brief prayer …”

Maybe the broad-shouldered trio were a town watch of some sort — and through the rays of sun and deep shadows she spotted a few other men, similarly well-built, stationed almost as guards around the huddled villagers, around the altar, around a space that might be the entrance to the crypt …

“We can be moving quickly,” Cedrec urged.

“Quickly is good,” Gavian said.

“One prayer together, princess, a prayer for victory …”

She nodded to Fidelity, and was about to tell her captain to give them just a last moment — but she paused, sensing something from him, some unspoken thought, and he reached out and took her arm, more firmly than usual, and said: “If they’re ready, we’re ready. The archangels will hear us pray from the road. You’ve shown yourself to your people, let’s be off, highness.”

Somehow she knew not to object. The smell of the place was intense, the old scent of smoke and incense and the new odor of sweating flesh, and so was a feeling of simple wrongness — something wrong in the flickering eyes of the alder, in the silence of his people, in the absence of children —

“Yes,” she said, trying to look graciously at the alder, “if the angels are good I will return …”

— something wrong in the size and shape and accent of the man beside the alder —

“… and the good sister here and I will be praying for you all …”

— something wrong in the big hand going inside his cloak, for all the world like he was still a soldier going for his blade —

Before anything else happened she heard Maibhygon say feyaer!, which even she knew, in a part of her mind that belonged to her lost days as a courteous hostess, that a prince of Bryghala would never say with a lady present unless the situation was dire indeed.

Then Gavian yanked her, so hard that she lost the sword and heard it clatter on the stone, and she stumbled with him toward the doors, in the corner of her eye seeing that the big man had actually drawn a blade, a legionnaire’s sword if she ever saw one … and then something, someone hit Gavian and she lost his hand and went down, her knee hitting the stone floor hard, the pain a jolt up her leg into her hips, and she tried to come up and someone was standing over saying “hush, hush,” and something was pointed at her, a crossbow, they were ringed by crossbows, men from nowhere, men who weren’t from Dernbridge, men who could only be from the…

“Falconguard,” spat Gavian, like her knocked off his feet and pinned in place, his sword drawn but useless, four men around them, Cedrec with a sword out to protect Fidelity, Maibhygon holding a dagger but likewise frozen by the weaponry.

“They took our children back to Rendale last night,” the alder said, a whisper that carried. “They took my wife and others into the crypt …”

“How many of you are there?” her captain said, almost ruefully.

The first big man, his blade naked now and level, shrugged and said: “Enough for what we need to do. What we’re doing. Time for you to join the womenfolk below.”

She thought she recognized two of them now, familiar faces from the Castle buried under hoods and stubble. The baby was wailing loudly. She wasn’t that far from the door, if she screamed the soldiers outside might hear, she might die but then whatever was planned might not come off, the battle might be won, the crossbow bolt in her breast a subject fit for ballads …

Her eyes met Maibhygon’s, and he shook his head, a tiny jerk but perceptible.

She nodded, and rose at the Falconguardsmen’s urging, and they began to move toward the altar. But then she did shriek a little, and she felt a swordpoint press up against her spine, as though ready to go through her and divide her breasts with steel — and somehow that seemed almost more desirable than the nightmare striding toward her like a priest leaving the altar after the sacrifice, the nightmare that was Paulus bar Merula, armored and beaming, with blood on one of his hands and arms spread wide in welcome.

“Why princess, a happy coincidence for both of us! I was just going to bring these fine men and come looking for you!”

The sword was still pressing, but she stopped moving, let him come to them. “How – you were under guard — how did you escape?”

“From the single guard set to watch me and the chancellor? I wouldn’t dignify that challenge by calling it an escape. But hunting you down was going to be trickier – and then, blessedly, here you are! To minister to your people, I suppose …?” His hand swept the benches around them, all the huddled townsfolk, who were really all the town’s old folk, white hair and parchment skin and eyes that stared like an audience at a players’ tragedy.

“A risky gambit,” he said, as if to answer her unasked question. “Clear half the village and most of its children as hostages, swap in some Falconguardsmen, leave just enough women and babes” – the wail rose again, as if on cue — “that nobody notices, and fill the crypt with fighting men. Didn’t know if it would work, but better than sitting in that old keep waiting for the Old Hound to come, don’t you think?”

“There are guards outside,” she breathed. “We’ll scream for them before you kill us …”

“Ah, but this isn’t a story, princess, and I’m not unfolding a plan for you to nobly foil. The men we hid are joining the battle as we speak.”

“Like I told you,” one of the big men growled, “crypt’s got two entrances.”

“One leads out and then down to the battle,” Paulus said. “I’ll walk you through it all, if you like, when this is over.”

She spat at him. “The angels see you! The angels know what you’ve done!”

“No doubt.” He gestured upward toward the shadowed frescoes, and his smile was almost sad. “But if they watch, and do nothing, what does that tell you about them?”

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It was warmer in the morning, with pink light behind the mountains and fog over the lake and snow. Veruna’s advance guard, ranging well south of the bridge that gave Dernbridge its name, carried torches as they moved through overgrown orchards and tangled scrub climbing toward where the lines of pines began. They carried drawn swords, as well — no one really expected the outnumbered Falconguard to venture an attack, but the fog was thick and clammy, the snow-mantled trees made strange shadows in the half-light, and the wind through the branches joined with the murmuring off the lake to fill the mist with ambient, disconcerting sounds.

They were close enough to Rendale now that one outrider, clambering up one of the rocky promontories that appeared regularly in the foothills of the Guardians, spotted the Castle and its towers, distant fingers through the smoky air.

He was also the first to die, a shout rising in his throat as a bank of fog lifted and exposed a line of men moving up a nearby ridgeline — a ghostly regiment with white cloaks and white tunics covering their armor — and then the cry of warning burbled away as an arrowpoint, cold as a sharpened icicle, punctured his gorge and sent his life spilling out in a bright red stream that stained his tabard, which I'll have to wash before inspection he thought as he fell into a snowbank that was colder even than the arrow and the fog …

A few more men died amid the clutching mist and sticky snow, but Veruna's outriders were no greenhorns, and within a few moments they had realized what was happening and were falling back in good order, some forming skirmish lines to slow the enemy’s advance and others galloping back over the ridges or pounding back up the road to Dernbridge, horns wailing through the fog, dragging their comrades from brief slumber to a morning of battle.

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The alder of Dernbridge was a pale moonfaced man with a white beard and a red apron. His hair was bound in a knot that bounced behind him as he moved nervously around his two-room house, looking for chairs to seat his unexpected guests.

“I hope my lords will be comfortable,” he said in a quavering voice that strained for dignity. “There’s bread and cheese in my larder if you happen to want it, I suppose you’ll be hungry, and I can stoke the fire …”

He had a younger man of the village with him, bearded with the muscles of a blacksmith, but if those muscles were intended to supply some kind of protection or support you wouldn’t know it from how the alder’s eyes flickered wildly from one soldier to the next, like a field mouse suddenly surrounded by hawks and hoping none of them were hungry —

“It’s all right,” Alsbet said, taking pity on him. “It’s all right, you’ve done well.”

“You can go now,” Berenek Skorshi said. “You’d best see to your people.”

The alder nodded stiffly. “Yes, my lord. My lords. Thank you.” He sketched a bow and made his way out of the house, tugging at a bearskin cloak as the night embraced him, his bigger bodyguard just a step behind.

The rooms were dark, despite the sullen fire, and the furniture carried the scars and grime that bespoke the alder’s unimportance in the scheme of things. There were only two windows, frosted over and looking out into the snow-mantled night, where the army from Caldmark now sprawled around and through Dernbridge, overwhelming the bridge, the tollhouse, the thirty-odd houses.

The alder had already gathered the town’s inhabitants at the shrine by the time the army descended upon him, and Veruna had decided they should stay there for what remained of the night — sleeping on benches or the stony floor, guarded by frescoed angels while officers occupied their homes and beds.

Do you have to turn them out of their houses? Alsbet had asked, worried that she was showing womanly weakness but wondering all the same, and the Old Hound had looked at her and smiled sadly. It’s better for my army, he told her, and in war that’s all that counts . . . that and killing the other fellow before he kills you.

Thinking, now, of the townsfolk huddling beneath the sacred images, clutching their loved ones close against the chill and cursing the follies of great lords, Alsbet felt the romance leak out of their night ride, and she shivered and went over to prod at the flames with the alder’s poker.

Behind her, Veruna stood with Lord Pter and his three captains, Rendell and Sedura and Skorshi, their murmurs no louder than the spitting fire. Benfred was also there, standing by one of the windows; he had brought a woman with him as his second, a slender leather-clad figure with a jutting nose who now stood poised and watchful near the door.

Alsbet didn’t want her uncle to join her by the fire, but she could sense he was going to cross to her several moments before he did — looming up at her elbow as she prodded the brands, his entire person a coagulation of unease.

“We should talk more,” he said quietly. “Not here, but soon.”

“Of course,” she said. “But not here.”

He nodded, and then as if unable to heed his own caution, went on: “You’re right that we should have told you. I think Cresseda — I think you knew her mind, in some way.”

“I knew that she hoped for a marriage, not that she hoped to win my hand at swordpoint. But now is not …” She half-raised her hand and he nodded and half-turned away — and then as if compelled he turned back, and murmured anew:

“When we have Rendale we will have between us a legitimacy that Cresseda needs, and needs desperately. You know that. We must confer about how —”

She was briefly grateful to the creaking sound that interrupted him, the noise of the door opening and letting in a stiff wind that stirred the fire, then two legionnaires as an escort for the delegation, and then —

— then him, just as she had imagined, an unarmed, windburned Paulus bar Merula, bareheaded with curls as dark as the night, giving his cloak a shake, crossing without hesitation to the alder’s splintered table.

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The snow came with first light, the sky’s steel darkening to pewter and then releasing a steady fall that lasted hours, into the afternoon, until the advance guard reported that their pace would leave them short of Rendale by nightfall no matter how hard they pushed the men.

So the Old Hound ordered a temporary halt, in a place where a narrow ridge ran down from the mountains and a long stand of black firs offered some shelter from the weather. The legionnaires threw up a tent where the trees were thickest and the snow lay light on needled ground, and while the army rested and waited for the snow to taper, the general and his captains and Benfred Montair convened under the billowing fabric, blowing on their hands while the white flakes blew and swirled outside.

“I would have pushed all the way,” Veruna said to Benfred, “but if what you say is true there’s no surprise to be gained, and no point in showing up at the walls in the dark with the men all winded.”

The tone of that if what you say is true suggested a continuing suspicion that it was not. That had been Veruna’s first reaction when Benfred had been brought to him in the wee hours of the night, exhaustion dragging at the duke after his mad gallop north from Rendale, astonishment obvious on the general’s face.

Is this some stratagem from Aengiss? Veruna had barked at him. A false defection to buy time for an escape?

It had taken a long conversation to convince him otherwise, a conversation that had revealed more of Benfred’s own role in the Argosan plot that the duke had intended to expose — and still Veruna clearly did not fully trust him, even though he was in the Old Hound’s tent, in his councils, standing with his three captains while they laid their plans. Even though Uffish and Edme rode alongside the Old Hound’s legionnaires, through whom he had been paraded earlier, to cheers — a Montair duke in the flesh to boost their morale and make them believe that their mad rebellion might work.

Veruna’s trust doesn’t matter if this works; Cresseda’s trust is all that matters. And the strong chance that it wouldn’t work, the strong likelihood that only death waited for them at the end … well, that was entirely unaffected by the unburied suspicion in the Old Hound’s gaze.

“Do we go all the way to the walls in the darkness, then?” This was Mulias bar Sedura, southern enough to have an olive cast to his face even in the winter, with curls fringing his baldness and coiling in his beard.

Benfred did not know him, nor Pter, the general’s quick and wiry adjutant; he knew the other two captains a little, the scarred and brown-toothed Dethferd Rendell because he belonged to an old Heart family, and Berenek Skorshi, a grim-faced Skalbarder, because he had served in the Falconguard as a younger man when Benfred had been more often in Rendale and the Falconguard had been more often in the south.

How much of their commander’s suspicion they shared he couldn’t tell; Rendell had been friendly to him, the others mostly spoke as if he wasn’t there. If he was to think as a conspirator he supposed that he should be cultivating them, or Rendell at least, against the moment when he needed to assert himself within whatever kind of rule they ended up establishing — “they” meaning him and Cresseda, or him and Veruna, or the three of them together, depending on what befell in the next few days.

But at this moment he felt less like a conspirator than an old man, old and tired and too long in the cold, and the idea of playing off these soldiers against one another seemed perfectly impossible, like climbing a ladder to the highest heaven and bearing back Mithriel’s sword for a single combat against Padrec.

“… have to close off the southward road first, nothing else is more important,” Skorski was saying. “It may be that Davian’s riders can get around the walls, outside of arrow range, and head south in search of signs of flight; the land might allow it, depending on the weather. But if not, or if the Falconguard moves to block us …

“… then we have to take the city, and swiftly,” Pter said. “So all depends on whether Aengiss decides to defend the city walls or not. If he does I’d take it as a sign that our birds have flown and all he cares for is delay.”

“If Padrec has flown it will be a pity that his grace here did not keep to his original arrangement,” Sedura said, flicking his eyes at Benfred.

The Argosan captain wasn’t wrong: It would have been wiser if Benfred had sent Edme and Uffish and the rest of his own men south while he rode north alone, returning to the original plan and interposing their small force between Padrec and any possible flight south. What was his excuse? Confusion, uncertainty, a sense that Padrec was well dug in and wouldn’t flee, fear of taking the north road alone, fear of coming to Veruna alone — it was all still a mistake, and another reason for Veruna’s suspicion, another weight on the scale against him.

The Argosan was still talking. “… and we won’t know for certain if Padrec is still within the Castle until we take it, or whether his grace’s flight to us changed …”

“His grace and I have discussed the matter,” Veruna said curtly. “Regrets are useless in campaigns. So yes, the city — Leftenant Davian will have tried to skirt it by the time we reach the northern gates, so we should have some sense of how it’s defended, even by night. If he sends riders back with word he’s cleared through to the southern road, well, then we can wait for morning. If he’s turned back somehow though, we could consider a night attack …”

There was a noise of hooves in the snow outside, a sound of voices, and an officer Benfred hadn’t met yet came in, his cheeks flushed pink, snow dusting his helmet and shoulders.

He banged a salute, brushed at his armor: “M’lord general, we have more company.”

“Aengiss?” Veruna barked. “Are we attacked?”

The officer actually grinned at that, his mouth going lopsided. “No, m’lord, nothing like that. But they are from Rendale. It’s the princess … it’s her imperial highness Alsbet, m’lord, and Prince Maibhygon, the prince of Bryghala. Davian’s men just brought her — said they’d only gone a little way on their latest foray when they met her party, coming up the road, pushing their horses …”

“Alsbet and … Maibhygon?” Benfred broke in. “What — who else is with them?”

“Just a handful, m’lord – her captain, Gavian, a handful of men, a pair of Brethons, I think, an old woman … she’s not looking well, looks like a night’s ride been hard on her. But the princess — well, we’ve got a fire going for them, we weren’t sure what to do, shall I bring them up …?”

“No,” the Old Hound said quickly, over the mutterings of his captains. “No, I’ll go to them. Lord Benfred, Pter, with me, if you will. The rest of you to your men; whatever this means we may need to make ready to push south hard.”

So Benfred followed Veruna down through the makeshift camp, feeling the snow burn his cheeks, trying to keep up as the general stalked rapidly downhill.

They reached a stand of firs close to the road, pushed through the trailing limbs, and found a sheltered blaze, built on a floor of pine needles where frosted pine cones gleamed like Winter’s Eve treats. The cones crackled and broke beneath their feet, the party around the fire stirred and turned to meet them, and from out of a cluster of huddled cloaks bodies separated and faces came into focus: A collection of hard-bitten soldiers; a veiled woman in what looked like a blue sister’s habit; Alsbet’s narrow-faced steward; a wizened woman with a beaked nose and the look of age pushed beyond its strength; and beside her Maibhygon mar’ab Daenab’yr of Bryghala.

And Alsbet — his niece, he always thought of her, though she was really his second cousin, a cousin he had tried to advise and cultivate for years, during his desultory attempts to be a good and loyal Montair, but without much reciprocation, perhaps because of the limits of her age and sex. A pretty girl, pretty enough to be called beautiful by some, but neither as lovely nor as impressive as her dead mother; a graceful hostess, and a credit to her father, but a pale creature, too, with shadowed, unhappy eyes; a clever girl, clearly, with a better head than her brothers for some matters, but without the ambition or experience required to be a real player in the game.

But now she was here in the snow and cold, pushing back her hood and exposing the sad eyes he remembered, but something else as well, something different in her features and her gaze. Perhaps it was only the flush that the cold brought to her cheeks, but she looked more like Queen Bryghaida, more like the fox-faced Brethons in her mother’s lineage — and she appeared fierce, somehow, though perhaps that was borrowed from the armed men around, or perhaps he was being fanciful in his exhaustion, his old man’s bafflement at how events were falling out …

“My Lord Varelis,” she said, and her voice was bell-clear, even imperious, despite the wind. Then her eyes flicked to him, and he could see the curiosity, but all she said was: “And my dear uncle Benfred. An unexpected pleasure.”

“Princess Alsbet,” the general said, dropping his head briefly. “Welcome. You'll forgive me I don't fall to my knees, I hope — the ground isn't suited to it today.”

“And your allegiance to my house is somewhat shaky, I believe,” the princess said coolly.

“You might put it that way,” Veruna said with a slight chuckle. “But if I may ask about about your loyalty, princess — what brings you out in weather that isn't fit for a mountain goat? Were you hunting, perhaps, and lost your way? With your intended, whose acquaintance I am very pleased to make …?”

Alsbet smiled. “Ah, but we are exactly where we wish to be — with a man who opposes my brother.”

“I see,” the general said, in a tone that made it amply clear that he did not. “Perhaps … I mean, we would welcome you to our cause, highness, but I am not, I would …”

“You would ask why I wish to see my brother toppled? Why, that’s very simple. You may know that my betrothed was arrested — along with others, of course — on charges of plotting to kill our father, your late emperor.”

Is this all for love? Benfred thought. Betraying her house for love …?

“Which I take to be false charges …” Veruna was saying, with exceeding caution.

“Which are certainly false charges,” Alsbet agreed. “My father, you see, was killed by my brother’s orders. Padrec killed our father, and I have witnesses to prove it.”

The gasp from Veruna’s adjutant was audible. So, Benfred feared, was his own.

The Old Hound himself was very still, while the fire crackled and Alsbet fixed him with her strange, bright-blue stare. Then, slowly: “His Highness Padrec … had your father killed. It wasn’t an accident.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “no, it wasn’t that,” and maybe there was a catch in her voice, but then it hardened, “no, he killed him, and so whatever your own sins, whatever your own loyalties, you must bring him down, my lord. You and all the empire.”

“He murdered Edmund.” It was Benfred’s voice now, strange to his own ears. “Padrec murdered Edmund.”

“It was done on his orders, and I have the testimony of a witness, and my own certainty.”

“And you want me to bring him down,” Veruna said. “Bring down a parricide . . ."

“I do.”

“You want to help me bring him down, and you have proof that he killed his father, murdered the emperor …” The general’s voice was rueful, as though the cosmos somehow amused him, and Benfred felt an eager, almost-hopeful feeling, which seemed wrong with his niece standing there so fierce and sad and righteous, but it couldn't be helped, he looked around at the men and the tapering flurries, and thought, for the first time in days, that maybe it would turn out all right.

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Just a few chapters behind on the audio …

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