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certainly would have been given, at least, the Abbey of St. Precious as her own with a mere word. And she had been offered Palmaris by Danube, to serve him as its baroness.
    If Pony was at all interested in this game of political intrigue, she could, in a matter of days, step into the thick of the highest levels of power.
    Duke Kalas, a political animal if ever Pony had seen one, understood that, of course, and so he thought his charms well placed. Except that, to Pony, those charms themselves were the most lacking.
    “If injured upon the field, I would have insisted on Jilseponie for my healer,” the Duke went on; and it was obvious that he thought he was paying her the highest compliment.
    Again, Pony had to work hard not to laugh. She understood Duke Kalas very clearly. The man could have nearly any woman in the kingdom; he could snap his fingers or run them through his thick black mop of curly hair and bat those pretty dark eyelashes of his and have the ladies of Ursal’s court fainting on the floor. Pony knew that, and didn’t deny that the man was physically handsome, beautiful even.
    But how that image faded next to her Elbryan! Kalas was like a magnificently painted landscape of majestic mountains, an image of beauty, but Elbryan’s beauty went far deeper. Elbryan had been those mountains—with the crisp, fresh air, the sounds, the sights, the smells, the exhilarating and
real
experience. Kalas was mere swagger, but Elbryan had been the substance; and this man, for all of his pride and puff, seemed a pale figure beside the ghost of Nightbird.
    She recognized that she wasn’t keeping enough of her true feelings off her face when Duke Kalas stiffened and moved aside suddenly, clearing his throat.
    Pony turned her head away from him, chewing her bottom lip, hoping that she had not done too much damage to Brother Braumin’s cause, and hoping that she would not burst out into mocking laughter.
    “The King was delayed,” came a voice behind them, and they turned to see Lady Constance Pemblebury moving fast to catch up to them. The woman repeated her message, eyeing Pony directly as she spoke. Neither Pony nor Kalas missed Constance’s point: King Danube had been delayed because of her.
    Pony rolled her eyes, fighting the feeling of mocking helplessness in the face of such abject stupidity. Constance—who, by all rumors, had been seducing King Danube for years—saw the attractive Pony, ten years her junior, as a threat and wanted to openly lay her claim to Danube.
    How could Pony explain it to her? Could she grab the woman by the shouldersand shake her until her teeth rattled?
    “He bids that we wait for him before entering the audience chamber,” Constance went on, shifting her gaze to Duke Kalas. “Of course, you may go,” she said dismissively to Pony, who chuckled, shook her head, and turned back for the door, acutely aware that Duke Kalas’ eyes were following her every step.
    She had rebuffed the man, perhaps had even embarrassed and insulted him, but likely, she knew, he would take that as a challenge and would come after her all the more blatantly in the days ahead.
    A man like Kalas always had something to prove.
    “I t was only a year ago since the last College of Abbots was convened,” Brother Braumin said to Abbot Je’howith when the two were alone at the side of the large audience hall. “How much the world has changed since then!”
    Je’howith eyed the younger monk with suspicion. That last College of Abbots had been a disaster, of course, considering all that had occurred since then. Markwart had declared Master Jojonah a heretic and had used the King’s own soldiers—for some reason that even Je’howith had not understood and still did not understand—to have the doomed heretic dragged through the streets of St.-Mere-Abelle village and then burned at the stake. At that same College, Markwart had issued a formal declaration of Brother Avelyn as a heretic; and now, it seemed as if the