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they’re coming after you.”
    “But I know nothing of use to such people!” The assertion, repeated a thousand times before the trial, sounded false even to me. Because now, of course, I did know something. Yet Lianelle had warned me not to speak of her magic books. For your life, Ani . . . I’d thought her exaggerating.
    Without waiting for more argument, he goaded his mount to a trot. Ladyslipper took out after the chestnut, though every morsel of my own spirit yearned to hie back to Montclaire and barricade myself in the study.
    Fear welled up like a black, sour flood. Ambrose could not run. “What of my brother?”
    “A well-guarded hostage is not so easy a mark as a lone woman in the country,” said Duplais. “But I’ve warned the Spindle warder to bolster his guard.”
    No matter how I detested Duplais, I could fault neither his logic nor his thoroughness. Naive was too bold a word for me, who had wasted these four years pretending I could stay hidden and safe at home forever. Dunderheaded described me better. No matter that Duplais had tried to tell me, I had not considered what Lianelle’s death might mean about my father.
    One of Lianelle’s fellow students, a young girl named Ophelie, had become involved in the illicit practice of blood transference in an attempt to grow her power for magic. Lianelle had known her friend’s secret and tried to help her. But my father and his confederates had abducted Ophelie and imprisoned her, and the three sorcerers had used her blood for themselves. For one brief hour, the dying Ophelie had gotten free of them, providing the first evidence that led to my father’s conviction. At the trial, Duplais had used Lianelle’s continued life as evidence of Papa’s supremacy in this magical conspiracy. Now she was dead, and with only this flimsy explanation.
    The lowering sun slipped through scattered clots of purple and gray cloud. Hawks and kites circled, dodging angled sunbeams as they surveyed Vradeu’s wheat field. The drying wheat rustled like a showering rain. But as we passed under the canopy of oak and beech, the noise of the Rill, the wheat, and the birds fell silent. The spongy woodland turf muffled hoofbeats and muted the light.
    “Damn and blast.” Duplais’ soft epithet sliced through the breathless damp like a saber. “Stay close, damoselle. Follow my direction, whatever comes.”
    No amount of peering into the gloom revealed what concerned him. I nudged Ladyslipper to Duplais’ side as he slowed, though every part of me wanted to kick her to a gallop. I had no other defender.
    “Hey up, steward . . . wimman’s heinend . . . whateer th’art called at present day.” The flat, contemptuous hail snapped through the woodland like a whipcrack. “And tha, too, lahddee fair.”

CHAPTER 4

    1 OCET, EVENING

    T he variegated gloom disgorged three bulky men in hammered leather. Heart thumping, I hauled on Ladyslipper’s reins. She came around sweetly, but two riders blocked our retreat. Duplais sat petrified on his chestnut.
    “There’s noort ta go, lahddee fair.” The cloaked swordsman who stepped forward wore a full leather mask, shaped so like a human face, one expected the narrow lips to issue a blessing. Deepening shadows hid the gaze behind the eyeholes and the human lips behind the mouth slot. A heavy brown hood, tied to the mask, hid his hair. “We’ve a small bizn with tha; thence can be on yer way. Doon, now. Ta ground tha go.”
    The big man’s bizarre costume transfixed me. Not a squared centimetre of his skin was exposed. Horrors could lie beneath so perfectly sculpted a mask.
    “Do as he says, damoselle,” said Duplais, taut as wind-stretched canvas. “Resistance gains nothing.”
    The secretary, so imperious this day past, had shriveled, appearing diminished and subservient before the masked giant. Wholly a coward. Face pale and rigid as a limestone cliff, he dismounted hurriedly and offered me his hand.
    I ignored his stiff courtesy