"All right, enough of that," z'Acatto said. "We don't have time to go all weepy. Here, take this."

He handed Cazio Acredo.

"Where did you get that?"

"Some soldiers were fooling around with it and left it in the hall near the kitchen. It wasn't Caspator, but I figured it was probably yours."

"Thanks," Cazio said. Then he smiled. "You stayed."

Z'Acatto's brows collapsed in a frown. "Not on your account," he said, wagging his finger. "I told you I was going back to Vitellio, and that's still my plan."

"You must be healed by now. You could have left months ago. Or has the Church been here this whole time?"

Z'Acatto's eyes lit up with familiar mischief. "No, they only arrived a nineday ago. I found another reason to stay. Do you know who built this place?"

"I don't know. The Dunmroghs?"

"The Dunmroghs? They're the last crows to land here. This castle was built two hundred years ago. Back then the land was carved up into petty kingdoms by the knights of Anterstatai. Does that give you a clue?"

"Should it?" Cazio said. "The only thing I remember about the knights of Anterstatai-oh, no. You've got to be joking."

Z'Acatto's smile broadened. "Douco Cherfi daz'Avrii."

Cazio took another look at the room they stood in and realized that all of the wine smell did not come from his old teacher. He was in another cellar, much vaster than the first.

"Impossible."

"Come along," z'Acatto said. "We'll want to be far away when they find you missing."

"You weren't looking for me at all," Cazio accused.

"Not until yesterday, no. But I have to eat, and the kitchen women told me you were imprisoned in the empty cellar."

"Thank the saints for your sotted obsessions."

"Yes," z'Acatto acknowledged as he led Cazio through the vast storeroom. "I was down here when the Fratrex Prismo and his men arrived, so they didn't catch me. I don't think they even know about me."

"They haven't searched here?" he asked.

"They don't know about this place, either," z'Acatto said. "The douco sealed it off before he left."

"Why?"

"To keep his wine safe, I imagine. He left the small cellar as a decoy. I'm sure he expected to come back."

"Then how did you find it?"

Z'Acatto turned on him fiercely, hand on his heart. "I knew it had to be here. The douco was the greatest collector of wine in the world. He would never have been without a real cellar." He waved around at the thousands of bottles.

"Aging for a hundred years. Of course most of it is vinegar now, but some is still potable. Enough for me to survive on for several months, at any rate."

Cazio nodded. He had been noticing the piles of opened bottles that littered the floor.

"How many of the douco's reputed cellars have we broken into now?" Cazio asked. "I remember the one in Taurillo when I was sixteen and that one in the house of the Meddisso of Istimma."

"And the one in Ferria," z'Acatto said. "But those were all different. They had all been in use. This one is pristine, and the barbarians living here never thought to look for it. Did you know even the small cellar they had you in was empty? Even before the Church arrived. Nothing they drink here improves with age, so why bother?"

They had reached a small, arched passage, but Cazio stopped in his tracks, incredulous.

"Are you saying you found it? Zo Buso Brato?"

Z'Acatto chuckled. "Four bottles," he said. "And one from the year of the May frost."

"Saints. I can't believe-how was it?"

He frowned. "Well, I haven't tasted it yet."

"What? Why not?"

"Not the right time," the swordsman replied. "Come on."

"But where is it?"

"Safe." He ducked into the passage. "Keep quiet in here. This passes near places where we might be heard."

Cazio still had plenty of questions, but he kept them in.

The passage soon entered a larger and very smelly one littered with trash and filth and prowled by rats. A faint susurrus echoed within it.

Z'Acatto shuttered the lantern, and for a moment they seemed to be in pitch darkness. But after a moment, Cazio began picking out a little light coming from a narrow grate above them.

Z'Acatto, apparently waiting for his own vision to adjust, started off again. As they passed under the grate, the general buzz sharpened into the sound of a pair of women talking, but they weren't speaking the king's tongue or Vitellian, so he couldn't make any sense of it. One of them sounded like the bold kitchen woman.

They passed under a few other grates, and then they traveled in darkness until z'Acatto reopened the lantern.

"We're not under the castle anymore," he explained.

"This leads out?"

"The douco liked escape routes. That's how we got into the one in Taurillo, remember? And that's how I found this one."

Not much later, they emerged through a trapdoor onto a wooded hillside. Below, a wide river flowed lazily by.

"Here we are."

Z'Acatto held up a leather bag. Inside were four bottles carefully wrapped in many layers of linen.

"We'll drink these when we get back home," he said.

"That sounds good," Cazio sighed. He meant it. To be sitting in the sun of the Piato da Fiussa drinking rare wine with z'Acatto, no worries about men who couldn't be killed with swords or what was really going on in Anne's mind or murder dressed up in fine clothes. Some cheese, some pears, a girl who wasn't a queen or handmaid to a queen- Austra.

Anne was supposed to be sending her to Dunmrogh. How long before she got here? Was she here already?

"I thought you would come around," z'Acatto said. "There's another bag down there with some drinkable but unexceptional wine; food, too. If you'll get that-"

"I can't go back," Cazio interrupted. "Not yet. There are a few things I have to do yet. And I'm going to need your help."

Z'Acatto shook his head. "I told you, I'm going back."

"I'm not asking you to get involved in this war of Anne's," he said. "But Austra is in trouble, and I need to warn Anne about the Fratrex Prismo. After that-"

"Hespero," the swordmaster muttered.

"What?"

"The Fratrex Prismo is Marche Hespero."

"The praifec of Crotheny? The one behind the murders in the woods?"

The older man nodded.

"All the more reason I have to tell her, then."

Z'Acatto's frown deepened. "Don't be a fool."

"Weren't you the one who used to chide me for my lack of honor? For using dessrata as a thing to get money and women? For not being half the man my father was?"

Z'Acatto lifted one eyebrow. "Last time we talked about your father, you called him a fool."

"And now you're calling me one."

Z'Acatto put his face in his palm. "Saints damn you, boy," he said.

Cazio put his hand on his mentor's shoulder. "Thanks," he said.

"Oh, shut up. Let's go steal some horses."