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myself believing him—which was entirely foolish so early on. I had vowed to withhold judgment in all these matters until evidence led me to the truth.
    “I understand, Chevalier. We do this for her safety as well as His Majesty’s . . . and Sabria’s.” I didn’t think a reminder of our larger purposes would go amiss. Uncounted thousands of Sabria’s people had died in the Blood Wars, the flower of her nobility, the most powerful of her magical families. A second orgy of death and ruin would destroy us all.
     
     
    THE EVENING HAD COOLED. SCENTS of thyme, lavender, and waking earth rose in the spring damp, and the soft rasping twitter of tree crickets engulfed the trees. Ilario steeled his courage by clutching his spalls—the shards of onyx and jade he carried to remind him of the ancestors he held sacred: surely including the father he shared with Queen Eugenie, and her mother, who had so generously taken her husband’s bastard infant into her home and raised him as her own.
    We found the stone bench empty when we reached the glade. I whirled in a full circle, relieved when the lamplight caught a band of silver near the font. “Master! I feared you’d left us.”
    The dark figure hunched on the ground raised his eyes. Ilario promptly dropped his pouch, scattering his spalls across the rocks.
    Dante’s lip curled. “I was relishing the quiet .”
    His collection retrieved, the lord sank to the end of the stone bench farthest from the mage. I took the other end of the bench, which set me between them, a position I feared might become familiar. As I set down the lamp and pulled out my journal, I searched for the right words to launch our odd collaboration.
    “So we are to be spies,” I said. “No matter how distasteful the word, I suppose we must accustom ourselves to it. Michel de Vernase made a public show of his investigation. The king refuses to believe his disappearance coincidence, which is why we must work in secret.”
    “In secret?” said Dante, scornfully. “With one of us the guilty queen’s pet?”
    “A fair question,” I said, laying a hand on Ilario’s arm to prevent him drawing his sword. “We are investigating treason, with all its heavy consequences. But His Majesty believes entirely in Lord Ilario’s sincere determination to keep our secrets unshared. I choose to accept the king’s word.”
    Though the pooled lamplight showed Dante’s face impassive, his restless energies roiled the deepening night. I hastened onward, opening my journal to the notes I had made thus far, my eyes automatically deciphering my encoded script.
    “So to our case and our plan. As far as the king knows, Michel learned very little. The assault on King Philippe occurred at Castelle Escalon. The assailant, who was never identified, wore royal livery. The evidence of his scars and bruises named him a mule used to feed a mage’s power. Thus, we know he was of the blood. He wore no mage collar, and unfortunately, de Vernase reported his handmark obscured by scars. So we are hunting a mage with talent and knowledge enough to work transference and the . . . complex . . . spyglass spells.”
    Dante stirred from his contemplative posture. “Hired by the shadow queen?”
    “The queen’s suggestion to the guard captain that he persuade the king to wrestle and thus divest himself of armor might only be a wife’s concern for her husband’s amusement. We shall not be privy to the personal disagreements between their majesties that feed the king’s disturbance. However, the queen does support two household mages, and it only makes sense to investigate them first.” I deferred to Ilario, tapping his knee when he failed to take my cue. “Chevalier?”
    “Orviene is pleasant enough,” he said, avoiding the mage’s heated gaze, “though a bit oily to my taste, always smarming after ladies above his station. But Gaetana is frightful. Women so large are surely an aberration of Father Creator, and she glares at me