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But since I’d refused to return a criminal to justice (she turned out to be innocent, at least of the crime she was charged with), I’d failed to pay my debt to the law. And an unredeemed man is beyond the law’s protection. If he saw those tattoos, I would probably end this night in the cell next to Fisk’s.
    Which wasn’t a bad idea.
    Unfortunately, Fisk’s wit is quicker than mine.
    “He’s Michael Sevenson,” Fisk said. “ The Michael Sevenson. Of Tallowsport.”
    I was so startled my jaw dropped. I wasn’t the 
Michael Sevenson of anywhere. And from my 
perspective, Tallowsport was at best a … mixed success. Yes, we’d brought down a great criminal, who’d held 
a whole town in his power and plotted rebellion against the High Liege. But to do it, I’d allowed things to happen that a true knight would never have permitted. And I hadn’t been able to find another way.
    But the guard’s face lit with interest and delight. For a moment, I thought he was going to wiggle like a happy puppy.
    “You are? Really?” His eyes came to rest on the small scars on my cheek and jaw, which confirm my description for most folk. “Sir! May I say how honored I am to meet you? And may I ask, how did you come to suspect that Roseman…?”
    And so it went. I eventually extracted myself from his questions, but I had to flee the lockup to do it.
    Without Fisk.
    The guard was very sorry to disoblige me, but he couldn’t force a debt on someone who didn’t accept it.
    And clearly Fisk wouldn’t agree to be indebted to me, ever again. He’d rather stay in gaol than be my squire.
    I should have gone back to Benton’s rooms, but I was in no mood to answer questions — much less sleep on the floor, in a bed not much more comfortable than the one Fisk faced. So I went to the stable, saddled Chant, and rode out of town — cursing my recalcitrant ex-squire with every breath.
    A long gallop cleared only some of the anger from my heart, but I refused to run my horse to exhaustion just because Fisk was the most miserable, stubborn, selfish villain in the United Realm.
    As Chant clopped down the moonlit roads, beside fields of half-grown crops, I had time to realize that the reason Fisk hadn’t been surprised to see me was that he’d seen me earlier, most probably when I was 
wandering about the campus. Even when he could have approached me without incurring any debt between us, he hadn’t done so.
    Dawn was bringing color into the red earth and green shoots by the time I was tired enough to accept that — as he’d said when we parted — Fisk wanted no more of my company.
    He was, in truth, no longer my squire, and I had to accept that too. And if that realization made me want to keep on riding, to the farthest reaches of the Realm where there’d be no chance of ever setting eyes on my ex-squire … I couldn’t.
    None of this personal turmoil was Benton’s fault, and his life had been devastated. If I was ever to call myself a knight errant again, I couldn’t turn my back on anyone in such need, much less a brother.
    Not to mention the fact that if I fled, Kathy would never speak to me again.
    So I turned my tired horse and rode back to Slowbend…
    Where a half a dozen men, in the blue and silver coats of the Liege Guard, promptly arrested me for Master Hotchkiss’ murder.

Painful as it had been, I thought I’d convinced Michael that I didn’t need his rescue. So after a restless night in a lumpy bed, I was surprised to see him coming down the stairs again, with that absurd guard still asking for details about Tallows-
port. Though the Liege Guard in Easton had reacted much the same, when they’d had me in their clutches.
    “But how did you know Captain Dalton wouldn’t betray you? Seems to me if he’d been working for the Rose that long, he might have gone over.”
    “If he’d ‘gone over,’ his wife wouldn’t have been a prisoner still.”
    Michael’s voice sounded stiffer than the question