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fastened my book satchel to the saddle, but I couldn’t bear to wait longer and had him give me a hand up. Yelling to Remy that we’d transfer the rest of my bags when we joined Duplais at Vradeu’s Crossing, I took out across Jaugert’s meadow. Allowing Ladyslipper her head in the soft evening was almost enough to outrun grief. We certainly outran Remy and his ass.
     
     
    AS THE TRACK ANGLED BACK toward the fretting ribbon of Pelicaine Rill and the crossing, I slowed the mare to a walk. An evening haze had settled over the gray-green stubble of Barone Vradeu’s lavender fields, half obscuring the vertical white rocks that bounded the valley. Remy and his cart were the merest dust cloud behind me. The wind and pounding rhythm of Ladyslipper’s exuberant run had cleared my head.
    Yet my contentment was short-lived. Duplais awaited me at the top of a short incline. Behind him the track leveled and plunged through a sea of rippling wheat before vanishing into a thick stand of oaks and beeches.
    “Well-done, damoselle,” he said, pulling his little chestnut around before I could halt. “We’ve time enough to get through the wood and across the ford before dark. We’ll have moonlight the rest of the way to Tigano, and the road’s easy enough. Quickly, if you please.”
    If he was in such a dreadful hurry, why had he brought me the long way around?
    All at once, the harsh realities of my situation stung like a slap on tender skin. We had encountered no sentry on the back road, and Vradeu’s Crossing would deposit us well outside Vernase. No one in the village and none of the encircling guard would have seen me leave Montclaire with Duplais. Deception. Duplicity. Lianelle had said to trust no one.
    “Wait! Sonjeur!”
    He brought his horse around again. “What is it?”
    “I must wait for Remy and the cart,” I said.
    “Impossible.”
    “But I’ve left bags on the cart. My clothes. Valuables.” I wasn’t going anywhere without the leather case I’d tucked under the seat of Remy’s cart. It held my mother’s jewelry and my own few pieces, my grandmother’s and cousin’s tessilae, a few coins I’d taken from Montclaire’s iron box, before consigning it to Bernard’s custody . . . and Lianelle’s packet.
    “The cart will proceed to Vernase, where the innkeeper will send on your belongings. I’ve left her funds for just such necessity. We must go now , damoselle.”
    A few times on his first visit to Montclaire, and for a certain moment after my father’s trial, I’d imagined Duplais possessed of some small portion of compassion. In the years since, I had marveled at my naïveté. Everything he’d said and done had been aimed at convicting my father and his confederates.
    My newly wakened mistrust emboldened me. “Why must we?”
    Had I been an artist like my mother, I would have sketched Portier de Duplais’ smooth, narrow face as chiseled ice, seamed with cracks spewing steam. At my question, the cracks split.
    “Because, damoselle, my king has charged me to deliver you to Castelle Escalon intact. As you so recently discovered to your distress—and my own—your father’s rank in the brotherhood of traitors no longer ensures his children’s safety. I was followed to Montclaire and have no reason to believe those followers friendly. Now, will you please ride?”
    The horrors I’d dismissed at Seravain came rushing back. “You believe my sister was murdered . For what?”
    “Vengeance,” said Duplais, his gaze roaming the path and the shadowed boundary of the wood. “Your sister revealed secrets that brought down three powerful sorcerers and stalled your father’s plot to upend Sabria. Those who dabble in murder and unholy sorcery invite retribution in like coin. Or perhaps someone believed she knew more than she told and wished to silence her . . . or tried to pry out her secrets for their own use.” He cast his keen-edged scrutiny on me. “Something’s changed in the world. Now