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  Byron stood, took her free hand, and kissed it. He did not release it when he was through. “Geoffry of Kinsmail, at your service, milady.”

  Kinsmail? Seymour pushed his full plate aside. The nerves that had prevented him from eating all day had returned. He had heard of Kinsmail, but the stories were vague and old, like a half-remembered dream.

  The Lady Jelwra smiled. The look transformed her face, made her seem little older than the boys they had found on the street. “Kinsmail does not exist,” she said.

  “Beg pardon, milady,” Byron said. “It did exist once.”

  “Indeed?” Her expression remained innocent, but her tone was skeptical. “You look like a titled man. But you’re probably lying to me. You’re probably one of Lord Dakin’s sons, sent to spy on me.”

  Byron smiled in return. He still held her hand. “Lord Dakin has no sons. And I am no friend of his. He holds the title to Kinsmail land. It seems he annexed it.”

  The Lady Jelwra touched Byron’s cheek with her fan. “Lands are lost if the owner doesn’t protect them, Sir Geoffry.”

  “It’s not quite that easy,” he said. “We have the Enos to think about.”

  She pulled her hand away and stepped back. “I have never had any trouble with an Enos.”

  “Not yet. But you’re young, milady.”

  Seymour clasped his hands tightly. No one talked to gentry like this. If she caught Byron in his lie–

  “I’m sure Lord Dakin’s Enos does not approve of his dogs,” the lady said.

  “I’m sure,” Byron said.

  She turned to her elderly companion. “Does this young man have a claim to Lord Dakin’s land?”

  “If he is who he says he is,” the man said. “The Kinsmails and Dakins had one of the few land battles ever recorded in Kilot history. Seventeen men died defending Kinsmail land. They stopped it before it developed into a final time.”

  “Mmm.” The lady tilted her head. Her ringlets fell away from her face, revealing diamond studs that ran along the outside edge of her ear. “Then if I’m successful in my bid against Lord Dakin, I would have to contend with you, Sir Geoffry. That would be ever so much more interesting.”

  She gathered her skirts and started up the stairs, her small white shoes clicking on the wood. Byron didn’t move. He watched her with the same preoccupied expression Seymour had seen on his face earlier.

  She stopped on the fifth stair and looked down at Byron. “Did I tell you that you look familiar?” She raised her eyebrows and her dark eyes sparkled. “Perhaps I danced with the Lord of Kinsmail and never even knew it.”

  “Perhaps,” Byron said. She walked the rest of the way up the stairs. He didn’t move until the creaks stopped in the floorboards above.

  Seymour reached for his plate. The food was cool now and he ate it automatically. The meat was chewy and tasteless, the gravy thick with flour. He ate because he didn’t want to talk to Byron, didn’t want to find out that Byron had been lying to him all along. Byron had been sent to the hounds because he was the Lord of Kinsmail, not because of some peasant uprising. That would explain his ease in the clothing and his understanding of the streets.

  Byron’s chair groaned as he sat down. He grabbed his plate and began to eat without looking at Seymour.

  “You lie well,” Seymour said.

  Byron continued eating. He appeared to be swallowing without chewing.

  “How did you think of Kinsmail so quickly?” Seymour let the sarcasm creep into his voice. “I would have been stammering something about shipping or–”

  “We’ll have to leave in the morning.” Byron ran a hand over his face. “And I was hoping to buy a lute here.”

  “Why so soon?” Seymour asked, surprised by the turn in conversation.

  “Where the Lady Jelwra is, Lord Dakin will soon follow.”

  “It’s more than that,” Seymour said. “She isn’t sure Dakin will show up.”

  “I know.” Byron glanced up the stairs.

  “Then why leave?”

  “Because,” Byron said softly. “I don’t ever want to see the Lady Jelwra again.”

  Chapter 6

  Adric’s head felt as if it were loose on his neck. His head snapped forward and back. He couldn’t get air, his throat was too constricted. Hay filled his nose and he wanted to sneeze.

  “Wake up, you little thief!”

  His shoulders ached, his whole body ached. He coughed, felt pain deep in his chest. The room was dark, but he didn’t want to open his eyes.

  “Wake up!” A voice, not the voice of the stable boy, but deeper, harsher, filled with something raw, like anger.

  “Be easy, Rogren. He’s hurt.” This voice was softer, a woman’s voice. Adric wanted to reach to it. It reminded him of his mother.

  “He’s a thief and he owes me for a night’s lodging. Wake up, boy!”

  Hands squeezing Adric’s shoulders were the cause of the shaking. Adric raised an arm, brushed feebly at the thick forearms that held him.

  “He’s awake.”

  Adric opened his eyes, blinked in the blurry light. The stable seemed grainy, covered with white spots that floated through the air like tears. Three people towered over him, a burly man who smelled of onions, a raw-boned woman with skin as faded as her clothes, and the stable boy, who hung back and watched.

  “What are you doing in my stable, boy?”

  Adric licked his lips. His throat was very dry. “The lord–”

  “I’m not a lord, lad.”

  “Lord Ewehl…looking for…me?”

  The burly man dropped Adric. He fell back into the hay. It poked him, dug into his sores. “He’s not a thief. He’s running. Get him out of here, Cassie.”

  The woman knelt beside Adric and smoothed the hair from his forehead. Her hands smelled of soap. “He’s hurt.”

  “So I can’t get any work out of him. And I’ll bet he has no money on him either. The night’s lodging is lost.”

  “We can’t just turn him out. I doubt if he can walk.”

  “He walked in here, he can walk out.”

  Adric tried to push himself up, but the hay kept sliding through his fingers. “Please,” he said. “Lord Ewehl–”

  “Let him stay,” the woman said. “He can help me until he’s strong enough to help you.”

  “He’s on the run. And if Lord Ewehl’s after him, the palace guard will sweep through here.”

  The palace guard. Good. Someone to look for him. Someone to find him. Adric grabbed the woman’s wrist. “Please,” he said again, wishing he could get enough air to say more.

  The woman looked at Adric’s hand, then at the burly man. “You were on the run once too, Rogren.”

  The burly man grunted and stood up. He prodded Adric with his foot. “Fix him, then, Cassie, but if he doesn’t start earning his way soon, I’ll throw him out. You know that.”

  The woman watched until the burly man went out the stable doors. Adric coughed. Something to drink would help. “Water,” he said.

  The stable boy dipped a cup in a nearby bucket. Water dripped from the cup’s bottom onto Adric’s chest. The drops felt cool and soothing. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t find the strength. The woman supported his head, and he drank.

  The water tasted stale but sweet, so very sweet. Adric coughed, surfaced, and drank some more.

  “Can you get me some more water, Milo?” the woman said.

  The stable boy disappeared. The woman leaned back and ripped the pocket off her skirt. She dipped the fabric in the water and wiped Adric’s face. The water felt cool. “You have a fever,” she said. “Someone beat you up pretty badly.”

  The woman’s hands stopped at Adric’s chest. He saw her eyes, then remembered the ornate dove tattoo which the Enos had carved over his left nipple at birth. The sign of his family. He tried to lift his arms to cover it, but could not.

  “Milo, come see this.”

  The stable boy crouched next to him. Adric closed his eyes. Lord Ewehl
said that people would hurt him when they knew who he was, hurt him to hurt his father.

  “What do you think it is?” she asked. “It’s not a bruise.”

  “It’s a marking of some kind.” The boy ran his finger over the tattoo. “They say nobility does that.”

  “Do you think he’s a lordling?”

  “He’s fat enough.” The boy leaned back. “I’ll ask around if you want.”

  “No. He’ll tell us if he has to.”

  Adric felt the panic leave him. She touched him some more, cooling him, soothing him. He was content to watch her work, wondering how such a washed-out woman could have such a soft and vibrant voice. But he didn’t dare be contented. He had to get to the carriage. His mother would be worried.

  “Lord Ewehl,” he said.

  The woman pushed him back against the hay. “Just rest now. We’ll take care of you.”

  Adric closed his eyes. He believed her.

  Chapter 7

  i

  Almathea opened the door to her room and stepped inside. What a hovel. A thick, padded bed, a single dingy window, a wardrobe, and two soft chairs were crammed into the small space. If her room was the best the inn had to offer, imagine the hole Sir Geoffry had. She smiled. Sir Geoffry had warm hands and the longest lashes she had ever seen on a man.

  The door closed behind her. Usci sat on one of the chairs, his feet curled beneath him like a cup handle.

  “So there really was a Kinsmail,” Alma said.

  Usci nodded. “They lost the lands to the Dakins when my grandfather was a boy. I thought all the Kinsmail heirs had died.”

  Alma opened the wardrobe. The wooden door squeaked. She pulled out a long satin dressing gown and tossed it on the bed. “Apparently Lord Dakin thought so too.”

  She tugged on her dress, reached behind her neck, and began to unbutton. Usci watched, his expression unchanged. When she had first begun to travel with her mother’s old adviser, Alma tried to shock him by changing clothes in front of him, prancing naked around him, and sharing her sexual conquests with him. Usci did not shock. He gave her advice, warned her against standing before windows, and often helped her undress. When her disappointment at his lack of reaction disappeared, she was pleased at the freedom his manner allowed her. She moved in front of him now, and he finished undoing the buttons at the small of her back.

  “I doubt that the young man is of Kinsmail,” Usci said.

  “He has noble blood.”

  “He is good-looking,” Usci said. “There is a difference.”

  Alma shrugged the dress off her shoulders and stepped out of it. Then she took off the slips that gave the gown its fullness. She pulled the dressing gown over her head while Usci picked the garments off the floor.

  “He is of noble blood,” she repeated. “He has the pale look of the northern gentry.”

  “Many peasants also have noble blood, milady. And even if he is of Kinsmail, he has no lands. He is little more than a peasant.”

  Alma brushed her ringlets, then twirled them around her fingers. “But a good-looking one, as you pointed out.”

  Usci sighed, his arms filled with white skirts. He shook out the dress and hung it in the wardrobe. “You are here on business, lady. You shouldn’t be distracted.”

  “Business.” Alma sat on the bed. Its softness gave way under her slight weight. Someone of the king’s girth would sink to the floor. “Lord Dakin doesn’t seem to care about those lands his family fought for. If I were here on business, I wouldn’t have time to look at Sir Geoffry of Kinsmail. But right now I can look and wonder–”

  A knock echoed in the room. Usci closed the wardrobe and walked to the door. Alma put her feet on the bed, tucking them under the folds of her dressing gown. Usci opened the door. In the light flickering from the hallway, she saw a man. But he was too short and broad to be Sir Geoffry.

  “The Lady Jelwra?” the man asked.

  Usci bowed his head slightly. “I am her manservant.”

  “Lord Dakin has arrived. He begs an hour to clean up and eat, and then he would like to meet with the lady.”

  Alma stood, her dressing gown swaying against her feet. “At this hour he is lucky if he even sees me.”

  “Milady,” Usci said, “you do owe him the courtesy of a meeting.”

  “And he owes me the courtesy of appearing on time. Hunting men with dogs taking precedence over my meeting with him.” She swept to the door, conscious of her bearing and the commanding tone of her voice. The retainer was young, his skin pockmarked, his eyes wide at seeing a lady in her dressing gown. “Tell your master that I will see him in fifteen minutes, no more. If he does not appear then, I will leave this place in the morning, heading for the palace, and I will not give him an audience. Is that clear?”

  The retainer nodded. “Yes, milady.”

  “Then why are you waiting? You are wasting your master’s time.”

  The retainer bowed slightly, then turned, and hurried down the hall.

  Alma sighed. That was almost too easy. She hoped that the confrontation with Lord Dakin would take more energy. Three years ago, when her mother had died on Alma’s eighteenth birthday, Alma had decided to increase the size of her estate. She hoped that by the time she was twenty-five, she would be the largest landowner in Kilot, someone whose power and prestige the king could not ignore. She had already acquired two modest holdings, a parcel from Lord Stilez, and most of Lord Lafa’s land. She was controlling the river access throughout the center of the country, and the king was already taking notice of her. When she left here, she would go to the palace for another audience, and perhaps some surreptitious advising.

  “Go downstairs,” she said to Usci, “and make sure that Sir Geoffry is not there. I want him out of my way. And keep Lord Dakin busy until I arrive.”

  “Yes, milady.” Usci let himself out the door.

  Alma opened the wardrobe and stared at the gowns she had brought. She didn’t know if she should dress seductively or matronly, be subdued or flamboyant. She almost opted for kittenish, but then decided that her reputation had probably preceded her. She took out a gown that had a high collar, long sleeves, and no lace. Attractive but modest. She smiled to herself, feeling heat flush her cheeks. The battle was about to begin.

  ii

  Seymour knelt on the floor, his arms resting on the windowsill. The shutters were pushed back, and moonlight flooded the room. Byron slept in the bed beside him. Seymour envied him his ability to rest even amid all the noise. They had come upstairs soon after the Lady Jelwra, and Byron had fallen asleep almost immediately. Seymour had lain on his back, listening to the murmur of voices from the common room downstairs, the laugher of drunks outside his window. He hated the noise, the crowds, and the confinement. He wanted to go back to the country, where things were quiet and moved slower.

  If he leaned forward, he could barely see the street below. Two cats started fighting, their screams and hisses rising above the other noise. A drunk kicked them, and they turned on him, crying out as they launched themselves at his legs.

  Seymour glanced at Byron. The noise hadn’t awakened him. Byron sprawled across the pallet, his arms flung over his head. He snored softly, and occasionally one of his muscles world twitch. Seymour had examined Byron’s knees earlier, and except for the aging scabs, the knees had healed.

  Byron should have talked to Seymour about the Kinsmail heritage. Seymour would have understood. Perhaps Byron felt that a peasant could only relate to one of his own kind. But to make up the elaborate story about barding, about Rury–Seymour shook his head. He didn’t know what to believe. If Byron were truly a Kinsmail, it made no sense to tell the Lady Jelwra. She had no scruples. She would probably tell Lord Dakin about Byron right away because Byron’s claim threatened them both. Then Byron would be in even more trouble.

  Seymour sighed. He wished he were home, on his soft bed, away from everyone. He could practice his little magicks, take care of himself, and talk to no one. Life had be
en good there. He wished he had never heard the hounds, had never helped Byron. But Lord Dakin would still have discovered the hut, and Seymour would have had nowhere to go. If he hadn’t come into the city with Byron, he wouldn’t have known how to take care of himself.

  The drunk sat in a doorway, his head against the door jamb, probably passed out. The sounds from the common room had grown stronger. He thought he heard the Lady Jelwra’s voice, answered by a man’s. Something about that other voice sounded familiar. The hair rose on the back of Seymour’s neck. He stood up and went to the door, opening it a crack. Below, a man laughed, a thick, gruff chortle. Seymour recognized it. Lord Dakin’s laugh.

  Seymour’s heart beat in his throat. He closed the door quietly and tiptoed to the bed, grabbing Byron’s shoulders and shaking him.

  “Byron,” he whispered. “Lord Dakin’s downstairs.”

  Byron didn’t open his eyes. “It’s just a dream.”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” Seymour said. “It was Dakin. I heard him.”

  Byron stretched. “Get some sleep, Seymour. This may be the last bed we see for days.”

  “He was talking to the Lady Jelwra.”