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that she knew came from—elsewhere.
    “I took your word for silver,” he said, “and I still do. But if there is any suspicion you have . . .”
    “My father is a wealthy and powerful man. That’s the only cause I can imagine.”
    “Do you have some rival who vies for his affections? A stepmother, perhaps? Someone who would prefer not to see you return?”
    “Oh, yes, my stepmother,” Anne said. “How could I have forgotten? There was that time when she sent me out with the huntsman and told him to bring my heart back. I would have died, then, if the old fellow hadn’t taken a shine to me. He took her back the heart of a boar instead. And then there was that other time, when she sent me to fetch water, never mentioning the nicwer that lived in the stream, waiting to charm me and eat me. Yes, those events should have been clues to my present situation, but I suppose I didn’t suspect her because dear father assured me she has changed so.”
    “You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?” Cazio guessed.
    “This isn’t a phay story, Cazio. I don’t have a stepmother. There’s no one in the family who would wish me ill. My father’s enemies might, on the other hand, but I couldn’t say exactly who they are. I’m not very political.”
    Cazio shrugged. “Ah, well.” Then a smile brightened his face. “You’re
jealous
,” he accused.
    “What?”
    “I’ve just figured it out. You think I’m sleeping with Rediana’s ladies, and you’re jealous.”
    “I am not jealous,” Anne said. “I already have a true love, and he is not you.”
    “Oh, yes, the fabled Roderick. A wonderful man, I hear. A true prince. I’m sure he would have answered your letter, if given another few months to get around to it.”
    “We’ve been around this before.” Anne sighed. “Escort whomever you wish, do with them what you will. I am grateful to you, Cazio, for all your help, but—”
    “Wait.” Cazio’s voice was clipped now, his face suddenly very serious.
    “What is it?”
    “Your father sent you to the coven Saint Cer, didn’t he?”
    “It was my mother, actually,” she corrected.
    “And did your true love Roderick know where you were bound?”
    “It all happened too quickly. I thought I was going to Cal Azroth, and told him that, and then that very night my mother changed her mind. I had no way to send him word.”
    “He couldn’t have discovered it through gossip?”
    “No. I was sent away in secret. No one was supposed to know.”
    “But then you dispatched a letter to your beloved—a letter I delivered to the Church cuveitur myself—and in a matter of ninedays those knights came to the coven. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”
    It did strike—it struck like tinder in Anne’s breast.
    “You go too far, Cazio. You have slandered Roderick before, but to suggest—to imply . . .” She stammered off, too angry to continue, all the more because it made a sort of sense. But it couldn’t be true, because Roderick loved her.
    “The knights were from Hansa,” she said. “I knew their language. Roderick is from Hornladh.”
    But silently she remembered something her aunt Lesbeth once told her. It seemed long ago, but it was something about Roderick’s house being out of favor at court because they had once supported a Reiksbaurg claim to the throne.
    No. It’s ridiculous.
    She was about to tell Cazio that when Austra suddenly burst into the courtyard. She was out of breath, and her face was flushed and wet with tears.
    “What’s wrong?” Anne asked, taking Austra’s hands.
    “It’s horrible, Anne!”
    “What?”
    “I s-s-saw a cuveitur. He was giving out the news in the square, by the wine shop. He’d just come from— Oh, Anne, what shall we do?”
    “Austra,
what
?”
    Her friend bit her lip and looked into Anne’s eyes. “I have terrible news,” she whispered. “The worst in the world.”
    CHAPTER THREE
    T HE C OMPOSER
    L EOVIGILD A CKENZAL STARED AT the spear with a