What am I to do, now that you have gone away and left me alone? The world is cold as winter, gray as death. There is no sweetness to my food, no harmony in any music that comes to my ear.

* Letter from Princess Helyan of Narvonne, addressed to Sir Maddoc of the Wood

☀

13th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

“Trist!” Clarisant leaned forward over the broken crenellations of the north gate, trying to get a better look at what was happening in the circle of torchlight under the two white flags. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Her brother Gareth wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against his armor as he pulled her back away from the edge of the wall. “Betrayal,” he growled. “Sir Florent, get them back here!”

Below, formed up behind the shattered north gate, Sir Florent and the remaining knights, as well as the Caliphate lancers, horse-archers and scouts that had come with General Ismet, had been awaiting the slightest sign of trouble. “Forward!” Florent commanded, raising his lance high in the air, before dipping it down to pass beneath the stone arch in the wall. A cavalry force over a hundred strong thundered out into no man's land, headed straight for the sight of the parley at full gallop.

Clarisant turned back at the sound of a thunderclap, putting her hands to her ears and wincing in pain. Where the failed parley had met, between the city and the enemy camp, Sir Bors had brought his flail down onto the ground between the two sides, and now he yanked it up from a jagged crater.

Sir Moriaen and his men had wheeled their horses to ride back to their camp, while her father and General Ismet helped the king back onto his horse. In the meantime, a force of cavalry rode out from the enemy camp, as well.

“We’re about to have a cavalry battle on our hands,” Gareth muttered. “Archers! Crossbows! Scorpions! Break the enemy charge!” Up and down the wall, archer-sergeants called commands for their men to nock, draw and loose, while engineers sighted the few remaining functional scorpions.

“But where is Trist?” Claire asked, unable to catch her breath. “I don’t see him, Gareth, I don’t see my husband.”

“Etoile,” Gareth shouted over her. “Get my sister out of here. A battle is no place for her.” Waves of arrows rose from both sides, arced high overhead, then fell onto the riders below. On both sides, knights tumbled from their horses, or horses somersaulted and threw their riders down. Claire could not help but watch the frightful progress of a scorpion bolt, which impaled not one enemy rider, but two in succession, skewering them like portions of meat to be cooked over a campfire.

“Come, my lady,” Dame Etoile said, taking Claire by the hand, but she couldn’t leave until she saw Trist come back safely. She yanked free, rushed back to the edge of the wall, but was caught beneath her arms as Etoile grappled her.

“Let me go!” Claire shouted, but Etoile dragged her away and then carried her down the stone steps.

“You can’t help him where he’s gone,” Etoile told her. “You need to get back to the keep.” Two horses were tied at the wreck of the old guard-house, waiting for them. Clarisant had thought Gareth and her father silly for insisting on it, when the king had only wanted a parley. No one broke a parley.

“What do you mean, where he’s gone?” Claire continued to struggle, but the broad-shouldered knight easily overpowered her.

“The daemon tackled him into one of those gates,” Etoile grunted, heaving her up onto the saddle of a palfrey. “Now, will you stay put, or do I need to tie you to the horse?”

“A gate?” It had all happened so quickly, Claire hadn’t been able to sort out the images in her head. Something horrid, out of nowhere flew at the king, she remembered that, and then Trist had moved faster than any mortal man had a right to. The way she’d seen him move before, flickering around a battle. The king had hit the ground, and then the monster was gone. Bathin, it must have been - that was the daemon the Marian Codex named the Serpent of Gates. But if Trist had gone through a portal with Bathin, that meant he was somewhere behind enemy lines, fighting a daemon by himself.

“We have to help him.” Claire reached for the reins of the palfrey, and found that Etoile had them in hand. The knight had pulled herself up into the saddle of her own rounsey, while Claire had been trying to get a clear idea of what had happened, and now they were moving south toward the keep.

“We don’t know where he is!” Etoile said, turning back to her. “Think, my lady. You’re smarter than this. You’re one of the smartest people around, but right now you’re panicking. They went through one of those daemon-gates, and I couldn’t see where it led from the wall. Might be that someone who was at the parley could, but we won’t know where he went until they’re back, if then. He’s going to have to keep himself alive for now.”

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Claire slumped forward, wrapping her arms around the warm neck of her horse, and couldn’t stop herself from weeping. She closed her eyes, and didn’t open them until long after Dame Etoile had lifted her from the horse and carried her into the keep.

“Who is it?” Baroness Blasine asked, from Clarisant’s sitting room. Claire was in the bed she and her husband had shared all too briefly, clutching his pillow to her chest and breathing in the familiar scent of him. When had it become familiar? When they’d been married at Camaret-à-Arden, they had only been together for a single night. Then, at Falais, they’d lived together in those rooms in the tower for a week, before marching. But she’d had him for the entirety of the march, the ride to Rocher de la Garde, and the siege that followed. Thirteen or fourteen nights, all told, she counted, out of almost three moons of marriage. It wasn’t enough.

She was so occupied counting, that she didn’t hear the response to her mother’s question. Her mother hadn’t left Claire’s room since Dame Etoile had brought her in, then rode immediately back to the north wall to lend her sword to the fighting.

“Lady Clarisant,” King Lionel said, stepping into her bedchamber with General Ismet at his side. Dully, Claire was aware that she should rise and curtsy, but she only clutched Trist’s pillow harder.

“Trist,” she began, and couldn’t make herself finish the question.

“Your husband just saved my life,” Lionel said. His armor was covered in blood and dust and worse things; he had only removed his helm before entering her room. “I owe him more than I can ever repay. I will formally confirm him in his lands tomorrow, and establish for he and his heirs a pension to be paid from the royal coffers, in perpetuity. When your child is of an age, if they are inclined to it, I will take them as my own squire. If not, I shall see to it a suitable marriage is arranged.”

“She does not wish to hear how you will reward her family,” Ismet said, laying a gauntleted hand on the king’s armored shoulder. “I know you mean well, Lionel, but what she wants is to know her husband is alive.”

“Is he?” Claire asked.

“We do not know,” Ismet said, leaving the king’s side and kneeling next to the bed. She removed her gauntlets, and took one of Claire’s hands in her own. “We saw him tackle Lionel out of the way, and then tumble through a daemon-gate with Bathin. I had a glimpse of what was beyond the gate,” she said, and paused.

“Where?”

“It looked to be a throne room, or a court,” Ismet described. “And I could see men and women in iron cages, suspended from the ceiling. And beyond them…” She took a breath, then continued. “Angelus. Bound in circles.”

“Cheverny,” the king stated confidently. “I recognized it in an instant. The throne room at Cheverny, and the Exarchs who were left to guard my father there have been caged. At least some of them; I could not get a count. But I recognized Dame Margaret, and my cousin, Sir Lorengel.”

“He’s a captive, then,” Claire concluded, swallowing back her tears. “If they’ve kept the other Exarchs alive, they wouldn’t kill him, would they?”

“I do not think so,” the king said, “Though we cannot be certain. We will not know until we have retaken Cheverny, and freed the prisoners.”

“Your husband will not be a captive,” Ismet said, and Claire thought she saw a smile in the way the woman’s eyes moved behind her helm and veil. “I thought he was a dead man walking the first time I laid eyes on him, but he only came back stronger. He should have died of Agrat’s plague, but he survived that. Put your faith in him, Clarisant.”

“Get him back?” Claire asked the Caliphate knight, and then raised her eyes to look the king in the face.

“I swear that we will,” Ismet said readily.

“We will do everything in our power to bring him home,” Lionel Aurelianus promised. “And the other prisoners, as well. Now, if you will excuse me, Lady Clarisant - I must see to organizing the pursuit.”

“Pursuit?” Baroness Blasine asked, from the doorway. “Your pardon, Your Majesty.”

“Aye,” Lionel said. “We broke their cavalry outside the north wall. Without their daemons, they could not stand against three exarchs, and our warriors had their blood up. Sir Moriaen has broken camp, and they are in retreat north. We will pursue, with our cavalry, and harry them until our main force can catch up. Ismet?”

“Go,” the kneeling woman said, not releasing Clarisant’s hand. “I will stay here, for a while.”

“Then I leave you in the care of your mother, and Lady Ismet,” Lionel said. He turned and left the rooms, shutting the door behind him.

Ismet reached up, removed her helm, and then unwound her red veil, setting it aside on the table next to the bed. Claire could not help but gasp, as much at the southern knight’s striking features as the shock of seeing her bare-faced for the first time. “I thought that you were required to wear that all the time,” Claire said.

“Not in the company of only women,” Ismet assured her, with a smile. “As we are here. You have had a shock, Clarisant. You are well? The baby is well?”

Claire nodded, released Trist’s pillow, and sat up. Her mother came to sit beside her on the bed, and placed a hand on her back. “I must look frightful,” Claire realized. “And I was so rude.”

“Lionel would never fault you for it,” Ismet assured her.

“You speak of the king in a very familiar tone,” Blasine remarked, her tone even.

“He has asked me to be his bride,” the Caliphate Exarch admitted. “Though I have told him that he must first speak to my father. And I must admit, the prospect of making a life here, in a strange land, is… intimidating. I know hardly anyone, save those I have fought beside, such as your husband, Lady Clarisant. When a woman has so few friends, I think it is wise to keep them close and care for them.”

“Are we friends, then?” Claire asked the woman who might someday be Queen of Narvonne.

“I would like to be,” Ismet said. “If you would have it.”

“I think that I would like that, as well,” Claire said, simply.

“Good. Because the king and I will need you,” Ismet told her. “He is a good man, or I would not even consider wedding him. But he will also need everyone he has to win this war, and that includes you.”

“My daughter needs to rest,” Blasine insisted. “Not do anymore traipsing around the battlefield. She has a child to consider.”

“What does he want me to do?” Claire asked. “More research into the daemons?”

Ismet shook her head. “No. He wants you to go to Raetia, as his ambassador, and save us all from starvation.”