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put down the paper and sat back, a man rendered powerless.
    Carlos knew his land was lost.
    When the verdict finally came from the judge’s mouth Carlos barely listened. His eyes were fixed on Sydenham. Sydenham glanced over at him, then turned back to the judge. But Carlos had recognized something in the look. He had seen the same nonchalance in the eyes of a German Prince-Bishop he had once fought for. Following a murderous skirmish before a fortified town, the Prince had sat his horse on a safe mound, gazing over the strewn corpses of his own troops. “Eighty,” the Prince had said. But it was not the dead men he was counting, only yards of terrain gained in the brutal advance. Sydenham’s glance at Carlos had made the same cold-blooded reckoning.
    The judge rose. The court rose. The judge left through a side door. The clerk rustled papers together. Grenville got to his feet, bestowed a smile on Sydenham that said he had expected no less, and strode out of the court. Sydenham moved toward the clerk to retrieve his voice at his shoulder, a drone of apology—the words, to Carlos, a senseless mumble. Then Powys, too, walked out.
    Carlos rose, his eyes still locked on Sydenham. Sydenham had killed him. Carlos knew that much: he was still standing, but Sydenham had killed him. And now Sydenham was chatting with the clerk and laughing. A polished laugh, like a woman’s. There was a pain inside Carlos’s head like alongbow too tightly strung. It snapped. He started toward Sydenham.
    Sydenham turned and saw him coming, and the mirth drained from his face. He stepped backward toward his table, the backs of his thighs hitting the tabletop. Carlos kept on walking, stalking. The bailiff at the back of the room shouted to Carlos, “Hoy!” Then, to his two men, “Stop him!”
    One of the bailiff’s men thrust himself between Carlos and Sydenham as a shield. All that registered in Carlos’s mind was that the man was smaller and afraid. He grabbed two fistfuls of the man’s jerkin at his chest and shoved him aside like a scarecrow. The man fell, then scrambled away. Carlos was now only an arm’s length from Sydenham. Sydenham, trapped by the table, groped behind him for balance, knocking books and papers off the table.
    Carlos’s hand shot out for Sydenham’s throat. But before he could make contact two hands from behind clawed at his ears and jerked back his head. Carlos knew it was the bailiff’s other man. The man’s knee rammed the small of Carlos’s back, sharp as an ax. His arm whipped around Carlos’s throat, clamping his neck in the crook of his elbow. With his windpipe on fire, Carlos leaned forward to break the stranglehold, but the bailiff’s man hung on so that he was practically on top of Carlos’s back. he must shake off this pest. But he saw Sydenham inching away along the edge of the table—slithering toward safety. With a sudden savage burst of power Carlos ran backward and rammed the man on his back against the wall. The man slid off Carlos’s back and collapsed on the floor, moaning in pain.
    Sydenham hurried for the end of the table. Carlos saw it. He was about to lunge for Sydenham, but from the corner of his eye he saw the bailiff himself running toward him, dagger raised. Carlos responded instinctively, reaching for the hilt of his sword. He stepped away from the wall to give himself a broader field of play for his weapon, and onlookers lurched backward from the blade’s deadly arc. As the bailiff with the dagger reached him, Carlos swung around with his raised sword, all his weight thrown into the downward movement, giving it ferocious momentum.
    The sword hacked diagonally into the bailiff’s face. The blade carved off half his chin. The tip sliced the artery in the side of his neck, then ripped a gash through the cloth and muscle of his opposite shoulder. Horror flooded his eyes. He dropped the dagger and clutched the scarlet pulp where his jaw had been. Blood gushed from the severed