«If it is so dangerous», she had replied, «then why do you abide in Rhemuth?»

«Because my work is there».

When he did not elaborate, she had dared to lift her chin to him in faint challenge.

«Did they order you to serve the king?»

His cold appraisal in response had caused her to drop her gaze nervously, pretending profound interest in a strand of her pony's mane.

«Jessamy, I shall say this only once», he had finally said in a very low voice. «I know that your father set certain controls in place to protect you, as I — and others — have also done. But to protect you fully would be to leave you helpless.

«Therefore, I must trust you in this, and trust in your good sense and the training you have received. I know it was not your wish to marry me, but I cannot think that you resent that enough to wish me dead, and yourself as well — which would very likely be the outcome, were we discovered. You know that I tell you only the truth. This is for your protection as well as my own».

Indeed, there could be no doubt that he did speak the truth — her powers confirmed that — and it never, ever occurred to her to betray him, little though she cared for her situation. Nor was she ever tempted to unmask any of the other Deryni who passed through the court from time to time — though, as her affection for the crown princess grew, she came to realize that she would act against even her own kind, should they pose any danger to the royal family.

But for better or for worse, most of the other Deryni she detected were old acquaintances of her father, a few of whom had even been present in Coroth on that fateful night. Instinctively, she gave them wide berth. The ones who came to worry her far more were the ones she could not detect.

Recognition of this deficiency in her abilities made her determined to rectify it, though she dared not go to Sief for the training she knew she needed. Fortunately, her studies with her father had been sufficiently advanced that she was able to shield her true intentions from Sief and begin formulating her own plans for the future, though she knew that she needed to know more. Unfortunately, she was still a child, albeit an exceedingly well-educated one for her age and sex. But at least Sief mostly left her alone for those next three years.

Once she had settled into the routine of the royal household, she had begun looking for ways to further her education — at least the conventional part of it. When she let it be known that she possessed a fair copy hand and read and spoke several classical languages, she soon found herself being summoned to the royal library to assist in cataloging the king's manuscript collection. There she came to the especial attention of Father Mungo, the aged chaplain to the royal household, who was taken with her learning and her willingness to learn (and most assuredly did not know that she was Deryni), and soon began giving her private tutorials.

She shortly discovered that both the king and the crown prince frequented the library on a regular basis — and thereby gained permission to spend time there whenever her duties permitted. Further honing of her esoteric talents would have to wait until she could figure out a way to gain access to teachers, or at least to texts, but in the meantime, Father Mungo's lessons and her own explorations in the royal library filled the time and gave her more tools for later on.

But she had known that her reprieve must end. On the day of her fourteenth birthday, on a sunny morning in early autumn, she was obliged to stand with Sief before the Archbishop of Rhemuth and reaffirm her marriage vows, in the presence of Malcolm and his new queen, the Lady Síle, Donal and Dulchesse, and all the royal household, for Sief was well regarded at court, and all agreed that he had shown remarkable forbearance in waiting three years for his bride. Reassured by Dulchesse, and gently briefed regarding what to expect when Sief finally came to her bed, Jessamy had endured her wedding night with reasonable grace.

She had conceived within months, shortly after the new queen was delivered of a prince christened Richard. Her own firstborn, a boy also named Sief, would have been a playmate for the new prince, but the infant died hardly a week after birth. Jessamy had not yet turned fifteen.

More pregnancies had followed at barely two-year intervals after that: a succession of mostly healthy girls, stillborn boys, and early miscarriages. The ones who did not survive were allowed burial in a corner of the royal crypt, for the childless Dulchesse began to regard them as the children she would never have. Queen Síle had also come to mourn Jessamy's losses — and Dulchesse's barrenness — and buried several children of her own, in time. The three women had visited the little graves regularly until Queen Síle's death, the same year as King Malcolm's. Dulchesse, finally queen at last, had died but two years ago. Now Jessamy laid flowers on the other women's graves as well as those of the children, sometimes in the company of the new queen, Richeldis, who had quickly borne King Donal his long-awaited heir.

For Jessamy herself, there had been only a few pregnancies after the birth of Jesiana, her nine-year-old, and only one brought to term until Krispin: yet another girl, now four, called Seffira, whom Jessamy loved dearly. Though Sief was mostly indifferent to his daughters, his desire for a son was still strong, and he continued to visit her bed on a tiresomely regular basis, despite the apparent waning of her fertility. Sometimes she wondered whether her own antipathy had kept her from quickening — especially when this latest child had been so easy to conceive. Young Krispin, however, had been greatly desired — though not in the sense that her husband supposed.

His very begetting had been profoundly different from any of the others — no resentful and resigned yielding to marital duty, but welcome fruit of a well-planned series of quick, focused couplings that were timed to the most propitious few days of her monthly cycle, accomplished quite dispassionately amid briefly lifted skirts in a shadowed upper corridor of the castle, where others rarely went — or bent over a library table, or braced against a hay bale far at the back of the royal stables, surrounded by the warm, dusty fragrance of lazing horses. Her pulse quickened at the very thought of those days, though it was the daring of what she had done rather than lust that excited her.

Within days she had known she was with child, and thought she could pinpoint exactly when conception had occurred, though she let Sief think that it had come of their usual, more conventional conjugal encounters. The memory stirred a pleasant aching in her loins, quite apart from the soreness after birth, intensified by the sweet suckling of the babe at her breast.

A tap at the room's inner door announced the intrusion of the babe's nurse, white-coifed head ducking in apology as she eased into the light of the candles burning beside the curtained bed.

«You have a visitor, milady», the woman said. The king has come to pay his respects. Shall I take the baby?»

«No, show him in», Jessamy replied. «Then leave us».

«Alone, milady?» Anjelica said, looking faintly scandalized.

«Anjelica, he's the king».

«Yes, milady».

The woman withdrew dutifully, unaware that her compliance had been encouraged by Jessamy's deft reinforcement. Very shortly, the king peered around the door and then entered, closing the door behind him and grinning. Jessamy smiled in return, inclining her head over the baby's in as much of a bow as could be managed from a mostly reclining position. As she looked up, she saw a flicker of pleased amusement kindle behind the clear gray eyes.

He did not look his age, though she knew that she looked hers, especially after the rigors of late pregnancy and childbirth — and she, more than a decade his junior. Now past fifty, Donal Blaine Aidan Cinhil was still the epitome of Haldane comeliness, fit and dashing in his scarlet hunting leathers. Gold embroidery of a coronet circled the crown of his scarlet hunting cap, and a white plume curled rakishly over one eye, caught in place with a jeweled brooch. While his close-clipped beard and his moustache were acquiring decided speckles of gray, hardly a trace of silver threaded his black hair — unlike her own once-dark tresses. The loosely plaited braid tumbling over one shoulder was decidedly piebald.