“How did you learn his name?”
The soft hiss of my breath in the air announced my answer. “I don’t know. Neither do Pellin or Toria Deel. They both delved me, sifted through every memory of Ealdor without finding the beginning. It’s as if someone whispered his name in my sleep.”
Bolt’s expression didn’t change, but his body stilled in a way that usually prefaced killing, and the hair on my neck urged me to leave. “Maybe someone did.”
I nodded, but it took Gael a moment to catch up. “You think Ealdor’s name came from Willet’s vault?”
My guard shrugged. “The Vigil is nothing if not thorough. If Willet had a memory of meeting Ealdor for the first time and learning his name, they would have found it.”
I didn’t much care for having my guard and my betrothed talk about me like ten pounds of mutton at the butcher’s, but we were running out of options. “I could call him.”
Bolt shook his head. “Pellin forbade it.”
I shrugged. “What good is a sword if you don’t draw it?”
His brows lifted a fraction. “I like that. It’s pithy and it’s appropriate, but Pellin’s right. Ealdor couldn’t maintain his contact with us. How many more times can he appear before he fades completely?”
“How can we possibly know that?” Gael asked. “It could be once or a hundred.”
Deep inside, not in my mind, but in my chest, I felt a whisper, like the softest caress of a breeze against my skin. “I could try to find an abandoned church,” I said half joking. “Maybe I’m not supposed to summon him at all. Maybe he’s supposed to come to me.”
Gael shook her head. “This is the southern coast. We’re fifteen miles from Cynestol, and you can hardly tell where the city stops and the next town begins. There are no abandoned churches here.”
Bolt looked at me for a moment without blinking. “There’s one, in Aeldu, a village half a day east of here. The swamp overtook it.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked. “We’re practically within spitting distance of Cynestol and the Archbishop. I’m surprised Vyne hasn’t scooped us up already.”
Bolt rolled a shoulder, dismissing my objection. “We’ll take Rory in case there are dwimor about. If we leave at first light we should make it back by sunset.”
I could feel an unfamiliar smile working its way through me. “You know Pellin and Toria Deel would forbid this if they could. What prompted this rebellion? I thought Vigil guards were the soul of unquestioning obedience.”
He shook his head with a hint of a smirk that on anyone else would have been a full-fledged grin. “It’s a recent development. I’m probably keeping bad company.”
The next morning we saddled four horses Bolt had hired for the day, clean-limbed cobs that pranced as though they’d just been broken. A suggestion of orange lit the wispy clouds overhead as we worked to muffle the tack.
Rory, still less than confident as a rider, scowled as his bay tossed his head. “Stupid growler. You’re trying to kill me, yah?”
Bolt watched the horse lift in a half rear and stamp the ground with both feet. “Consider it part of your education. Sometimes speed comes at a price.”
Gael swung into the saddle with a grace and confidence that quieted her mount. I felt more like Rory. “Couldn’t you find horses that were a little less enthusiastic?”
“I wanted fast, not tame.”
I nodded, but I missed Dest. We’d been together for years, and I used to talk to him when companions were scarce. I couldn’t seem to hang on to friends, no matter how many legs they had.
Bolt didn’t bother to hide our path out of the village. Almost as ancient as Cynestol itself, Edring was one of innumerable villages attached to the great city and occupied a series of hills to the northeast. If the Archbishop discovered the village we were hiding in, it would be a short search, even if he took the time to go building to building. We rode east into the sun, but the orange-yellow light failed to encourage me, despite the fact that I’d had seven nights of uninterrupted sleep.
“What’s Cynestol like?” I asked Gael.
“That’s a short question with a long answer, Willet,” she said. “The customs are different, especially in court.” She gave me a smile that was just short of laughter. “The good news is they tend to view our northern propensity for challenges and dueling as somewhat barbaric.”
I frowned. “That’s not what I meant, but since you brought it up, how do they settle disputes between nobles?”
She smiled without showing her teeth in a way that curved her lips into a bow that her gift made unfairly graceful. How was I supposed to concentrate?
“They get married,” she said.
“What?”
“She’s right,” Bolt said. “It’s their national passion. The nobles in Moorclaire raise hounds, those in Bunard fight, but the nobility in Aille get married. Alliances are formed and split based on each family’s extensions into other families. The fact that the Crown allows marriages to be dissolved for almost any reason means keeping track of those alliances is an ordeal. Queen Chora has a whole ministry devoted to the job. Then again, she has a ministry devoted to almost everything.”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” I said. “And I should know.”
Gael laughed, and I let the clean high sound wash over me like a benison. “I don’t think it’s the type of place you would enjoy, Willet, but Kera and I savored every visit. It’s where we mastered the nuances of our game.”
We rode for four hours, and as the smell of salt intensified, the landscape gradually changed from sandy scrub to marshland. An hour before the sun reached its zenith, Bolt pointed to a spot in the distance that wavered in the heat. “There.”
I couldn’t see anything except shimmering air and said so.
“You don’t know what to look for,” my guard said. “From this point on, make sure you stay on the road. The ground
