Two days had passed since Sbelto, and Bondrea remained as it had been since the burning: a city that looked like a mouth with most of its teeth torn out. Wind moved through empty window frames and made a low animal sound in the corridors. The cisterns were shallow bowls, the fields a scab that would not heal. No courier had ridden up the road. No raven had come down on the battlements with a ribbon at its leg. Silence, which in other places could be a mercy, in Bondrea was simply proof.

  Alexander stood at the north parapet and counted roofs that were not worth counting. Below, the new garrison drilled in the yard, Lukas Drier’s work, orderly and joyless, the way a funeral procession is orderly. When the formation broke, Lukas climbed the stair with the respectful clatter of a man who knew exactly how much noise to make.

  “Your Lordship,” he said, when he reached the last step. He did not salute. He never did. He loved forms, not gestures.

  “Good morning,” Alexander said. “If we can still call it morning after the sun gives up trying.”

  Lukas glanced at the sky. “It’s there,” he said. “Just doing its work somewhere else.”

  “The sun and I have that in common,” Alexander replied. He kept his gaze on the ruined quarter. “Tell me again how I’m meant to pay tithes on a place that can’t support mice.”

  “We’ve already reduced the levy once,” Lukas said. “I put the request through the proper hands. Jacobo signed it himself.”

  “From one sixth to one tenth,” Alexander said. “A merciful murder is still a murder.”

  Lukas’s mouth tugged, his version of a smile. “The accounts don’t care how you feel about them.”

  “That is their only admirable quality.” Alexander turned to him at last. “We have no mill-stone. The riverbed is a memory. Your men dig ditches and find ash. The few families who were mad enough to return ask me whether the Light will poison their children if they plant barley. I would like to host a harvest festival, Lukas. I have nothing to harvest but regrets.”

  “You could sell timber from the manor groves,” Lukas offered, practical as a ledger line. “Or the slate from the south ridge. I can have the men pry the good pieces loose.”

  “Good. We’ll feed the Priesthood slates,” Alexander said. “They can bake them into bread and call them absolution.”

  “That joke will sound better when you tell it to Jacobo,” Lukas said, deadpan.

  Alexander breathed out, not quite a laugh. “I admire your consistency.”

  “Consistency is cheaper than courage,” Lukas said, shrugging. “And I can afford it.”

  They stood with the wind for a moment. Below, a sergeant barked at a boy who had forgotten his left foot. Somewhere within the keep a hinge complained like an old man.

  “Any word?” Lukas asked, finally voicing what they’d both been not saying.

  “Nothing,” Alexander said. “If it went well, messengers are wise enough not to ride straight here. If it went poorly, the same.” He tapped the parapet with a knuckle. “Either way, absence is useful.”

  “For you,” Lukas said.

  “For all of us,” Alexander answered. “Ignorance is the only innocence anyone in Dromo can still claim.” He glanced sideways. “How are your letters coming?”

  Lukas’s jaw worked in a way that might have been annoyance. “My letters are exactly where they need to be.”

  “On paper,” Alexander said, “or in someone else’s mouth?”

  “If the High Servant wants me to read, he should have sent me to a monastery at nine instead of to a siege at twelve,” Lukas said. “I can make a man hold a spear straight. I can’t make a script hold still.”

  “And yet here we are,” Alexander said mildly, “governed by ink.” He let the subject sit, because he always did. “You’re doing your duty, Lukas.”

  “I am doing yours,” Lukas said. There was no heat in it. “Jacobo calls it mine.”

  “And you call it work,” Alexander said. “Which is why he trusts you.”

  Footsteps approached along the wall-walk, quick and uneven, a steward’s rhythm. The castle’s major-domo, who had once kept accounts for a salt-house and still smelled faintly of brine when he sweated, bowed at a cautious angle.

  “My lord,” he said. “A visitor begs audience. Lord Carlus of Legonia.”

  Alexander lifted an eyebrow. “Legonia travels?”

  “He… was brought,” the steward said. “With care. His household claims he felt strongly about paying his respects.”

  “Bring him to the great hall,” Alexander said. He glanced at Lukas. “Weapons Master, you’ll join us.”

  Lukas hesitated. “I was told to remain with you, not in front of you.”

  “You can stand at my shoulder,” Alexander said. “The distinction will keep you warm.”

  They went down together. The great hall still smelled of the fire that had gutted it, no matter how many times they had scrubbed the stone. Sunlight came through a patched oculus and fell in a pale coin on the flagging. The chair that had once been a duke’s had been planed, stripped, and left honest.

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  Lord Carlus of Legonia came in on the arm of a footman, with another at his other side and a third making a small umbrella of himself against the draft. The old man was what age becomes when it lingers too long: parchment skin, hair like frost clinging to a fence, a tremor that kept its own time. His clothes were significant rather than fine; the rings on his fingers were thin from generations’ worth of prayers and doors.

  He paused to catch his breath and took in the ruined hall the way a veteran takes in a battlefield, without surprise. When he lifted his gaze to Alexander, there was a small, puzzled courtesy in it, as if he had been expecting someone taller or shorter and did not mind being wrong.

  “Lord of Bondrea,” he said. He did not attempt the Dromo name, whether out of respect or forgetfulness. “I am very old.”

  “A fact I envy,” Alexander said. He stepped forward and bowed as if the floor were still polished. “You honor a poor house.”

  “Legonia has never been rich,” Carlus said, and smiled faintly. “We are acquainted with poor houses.”

  He let himself be lowered to a bench as if docking a ship. His attendants withdrew exactly three paces and arranged their faces into discretion.

  “May I offer you broth?” Alexander said.

  “If it’s warm,” Carlus said, “I’ll believe in your kindness.” He turned his head and noticed Lukas. “And who is this large shadow?”

  “Lukas Drier,” Alexander said. “Weapons Master. He and I share a benefactor.”

  “Ah,” Carlus said. “I once shared a benefactor. He died very slowly.” He said it without malice; it was simply a thing that had happened in a long life.

  The steward brought a cup that steamed. Carlus sipped, shut his eyes as if the heat alone were prayer, and then nodded to himself.

  “You wanted to see me,” Alexander said. He sat across, close enough to be heard without the old man lifting his voice.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Carlus said.

  Alexander’s expression did not change. “For what?”

  “For your part in unburdening a certain noble of a title he did not deserve,” Carlus said, his tone mild as fresh bread. “Gustav of Galiera is dead. It appears Vishora will have to forgive him in his absence. I have been told, by men who like to be early to good news, that the stewardship will pass to me, perhaps even the ducal style, if the High Servant finds me sufficiently boring.”

  Lukas’s eyes flicked to Alexander and back, a soldier’s small movement.

  “You have been told many things,” Alexander said. “Many things are told.”

  “That is their nature,” Carlus agreed. “But gratitude doesn’t need a map. I came to say it before I forget that I came.” He set the cup down carefully and considered the veins on his hand. “I know about letters, Lord of Bondrea. I know what kinds of letters arrive on nights when men think no one is watching. I know which seals are shown and which are only spoken of. I know that sometimes a paper falls into the correct hands at the correct hour and a rumor becomes a rope. You don’t need to say it. I don’t need you to say it.”

  Alexander studied him, then the attendants, then Lukas, then back to the old man. “I’m afraid I can’t accept thanks for a thing I didn’t do.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Carlus said, perfectly cheerful. “It would be unseemly.” His eyes, which had watered since he entered, cleared for a heartbeat. “But I can offer it. And I do.”

  He leaned back and let the tremor take his hands again. “I never cared for Galiera,” he said. “He had the look of a man who understood appetite only when it was his own. The Priests do love a man like that. They can weigh him very precisely.”

  “I had not formed a firm opinion,” Alexander said. “He’s been difficult to find lately.”

  “Dead men are,” Carlus said, with simple logic. “I did not come to gossip.” He reached for the cup and found it on the second try. “I did not stand with Valeo. I did not stand with the fire that replaced him. I was never brave. But I have outlived both kinds of courage. That must mean something.”

  “It means Legonia was careful,” Alexander said.

  He blinked, then squinted at the nearest wall-hanging, a smoke-stained bit of linen that had once been a stag. “Bondrea was green when I was a boy,” he said. “We came through on pilgrimage. The stream laughed at our feet. My sister fell in and my father pretended to be angry. There was bread with fennel in it at the inn. I remember that. It is good when a place has fennel.” His gaze returned, and the present came back with it. “You are doing a hard thing, Lord of Bondrea.”

  “I am doing the thing in front of me,” Alexander said.

  “That’s the hardest one,” Carlus murmured. “The others are only imagined.” He straightened, gathering dignity around bones that had little left. “I will not trouble you with advice. When men my age offer it, they are only trying to relive the hour when their opinions were fashionable. I have none. Only thanks.” He smiled again, the kind of smile that occurs when a man puts down a heavy box and pretends it was not heavy.

  Alexander inclined his head. “Then I accept the sentiment, if not its premise.”

  “Fair,” Carlus said. He gestured vaguely and his attendants took the cue, rising to help him to his feet. “If I am given Vishora,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “I will not be in your way.”

  “You’re not in it now,” Alexander said.

  “That is why I came,” Carlus said, pleased. “To be exactly that helpful.”

  The steward was already moving to the door when a second runner beat him there, breathless in the manner of good news or fire. He crouched into a bow that turned into a wobble.

  “My lord,” the runner said to Alexander, eyes bright with travel. “Your brother has arrived. Phillip of Dromo is at the gate.”

  Carlus’s eyebrows lifted, two pale birds taking a short flight. “The family continues,” he said, approving of continuity as a concept.

  “Show him to the small council room,” Alexander told the steward. “Have the brazier lit, and wine that hasn’t turned to vinegar.” He rose smoothly, then looked to Lord Carlus. “Will you rest here, or shall I have your men see you home?”

  “Home is the last place I go,” Carlus said. “But it is still the place I go.” He bowed, beautifully, briefly, the way men were taught to bow when grace was the only coin that could not be taxed. “May Bondrea remember fennel.”

  “And may Legonia forget ash,” Alexander said.

  They watched the old lord leave, the attendants making a careful architecture around him, as if one badly placed breath could topple the whole thing. When the hall had swallowed them, Lukas exhaled through his nose.

  “He thanked you without saying what for,” Lukas said.

  “He thanked a rumor,” Alexander said. “Rumors are the only currency that appreciates with age.”

  “You deny it,” Lukas said.

  “I deny everything,” Alexander replied lightly. “It keeps our friend at the top of the temple guessing.”

  Lukas’s gaze drifted to the oculus. “Phillip, then,” he said. “With news.”

  “With something,” Alexander said. He smoothed a crease in his sleeve, a reflex so ingrained it had become a strategy. “Let’s see whether it is the kind that solves a problem, or the kind that becomes one.”

  He crossed the hall toward the council door, his step unhurried, his face composed into that pleasant neutrality he wore the way other men wore armor. Outside, Bondrea’s wind went on making its low animal sounds. Inside, a fire woke in the brazier, found the iron, and held.

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