the sweet smells, squires had set up booths and pavilions decorated with their lord’s crests and pennants. Forges burned and smoked oily fumes into the night air as grease- and sweat-stained smithies worked over anvils, bribed with handfuls of copper zechins into making repairs to horseshoes, lances, or shields. Squires were overseeing the repairs, and would undoubtedly work well into the small hours polishing and oiling suits of chain mail. The loser of each match had to forfeit his armour and horse to the winning knight, and it was a matter of pride that, win or lose, a knight’s equipment should bear no spot of rust or broken link of steel.
Servanne was beginning to feel the tension in her legs long before Alaric slowed his pace and lifted a cautionary finger to his lips. They had left the noise of hammers and toilers well behind and entered a darker, quieter sector of the bailey. Servanne had no idea where they were, no idea the grounds were so vast and sprawling. She pressed into the deeper shadows as instructed and wondered how Alaric seemed to know the right twists and turns to make. But then she recalled—the Wolf had grown up within these walls. After fifteen years, if he remembered overgrown forest paths and lost monasteries, he would have no difficulty remembering the nooks and crannies of the place he had called home.
In the gloom, the nook where Alaric had brought her was about as isolated and dismal as it possibly could be—and for good reason. With a small start, Servanne identified the sketch hung on the sign over the door, and realized it was where shrouds and coffins were made for the unluckier castle residents.
“Dear God,” she whispered, pulling instinctively away.
“Even God has the courtesy to stay away from here tonight,” Alaric said, catching her arm and squeezing it gently for moral support. “It was the safest place we could think of for a meeting. Even so … be brief, my lady. Gil and the others will keep a sharp eye out for intruders; I shall wander back toward the psaltery and wait for you there. Go now, and have a care to make some small noise before you reach the door, or you will feel the bite of a knife between your shoulders before you can correct the oversight. Keep well to the deepest part of the shadows …”
Servanne drew a deep breath to bolster her courage and crossed the last moonlit patch of ground. Her footsteps crunched over straw and hay and she made no attempt to dampen the sound, chilled by Alaric’s warning. She paused before the low-slung door a moment and offered a heartfelt prayer to any saint who might not have already completely forsaken her. She debated knocking, but a further thought saw her simply lift the crude wooden latch and step tentatively inside.
Dust was as thick as fog in the interior of the stone and thatch hut, and it took her eyes several seconds to adjust to the feeble amber light cast by a guttering taper. Another quelling bubble of panic rose in her chest, for the gloom was dense enough to conceal man or beast, and, since she was not certain which of the two she should expect to see here tonight, she did not rush eagerly to meet her fate.
He was there, in the darkest of the shadows, his form slowly emerging from the strangely selective light. He was leaning against the far wall, his arms folded over his chest, observing her calmly and casually, as if it was a nightly occurrence to arrange meetings with noblewomen in a room where mourning shrouds and coffins guarded the silence.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked in a gritty, spine-scratching growl.
“You are … Lord La Seyne?”
His response was a long and expressive sigh that warned of little patience for unnecessary questions. He unfolded his arms and Servanne understood why there was a glaring lack of form to give him substance: he was dressed all in black. His fists were gloved in black leather, his jerkin and doublet were quilted out of black wool, studded with tiny silver bosses along the seams and at each junction of the bold squares. His shirt, leggings, and tall knee boots were black as well, and above the band of rolled hide that comprised the collar of his doublet, the gleam of black silk set Servanne’s heart fluttering within her breast. At the sight of the mask, despite her