The youth sighed. «Very well. Then my first order as Duke of Nainan is that you do not call me 'Your Grace.' Now what were you going to say?»

«I was going to ask how many of the assassins do we have for questioning?»

«The killer himself is alive. So is one of the six riders. They caught up with a second, but could not take him alive.»

«He was probably the one who knew all the secrets,» said Blade sourly. «However, two prisoners are more than I expected. I think you should reward the guards. Soon-while they're still alive to spend the money.»

«I will send you back to Castle Ranit yourself, to give them the money and hear what the prisoners say,» said Chenosh. And see Miera. The thought hung unspoken in the air between them. «I will come-«

«You won't leave this castle without at least a hundred armed Lords around you!» snapped Blade.

Chenosh's face hardened. «My second order to you as Duke of Nainan is not to interrupt me. Let me finish what I have to say. You may find it wiser than you think!»

«I'm sorry, Chenosh.» Blade realized just how badly shaken he must be, to have been so rude. Chenosh would need all the help he could get to uphold his authority.

«No harm done this time.» Chenosh sighed. «I will return to Castle Ranit as soon as Alsin can spare me enough Lords for an escort. He will command here until I return or send orders.»

Blade rose. «I don't know what I might be riding into, at Castle Ranit. So I'll leave Cheeky here, with a message to trust you if I don't come back. If I don't, I think Lord Gennar or Lord Ebass should be given command over the Guardsmen. Both will be obeyed.»

«It shall be as you wish, Blade.»

«Good.» Blade stalked out of the stable. Men cleared a path for him as they saw the look in his eyes and the set of his jaw.

Blade rode back to Castle Ranit as fast as the relays of horses would carry him. He still tried to spare his mounts as much as he could. With war approaching, Nainan and its allies would need every sound horse they had.

He didn't try to spare himself. He ate nothing, drank only water, and said hardly anything to anybody as he pounded down the dusty roads. By the time he reached Castle Ranit, he was a red-eyed, dust-caked figure out of a nightmare.

He found Miera unconscious, lying facedown in the great bed where they'd made love and conceived the child which now might never be born. They'd cut off all her hair to bandage the fractured skull. She looked more like a shrunken doll than the woman Blade had held in his arms no more than two days before.

The doctors assured him of the fact that she was dangerously wounded but that she might survive; certainly they would do everything they could. Blade didn't take much comfort from this. The doctors would try to be optimistic no matter what, and they could hardly promise not to do their best. He had nothing to say to them, so he went to look at Duke Cyron's body.

The embalmers were just finishing their work. In the summer heat, embalming was needed to prevent decay even for the few days it would take Chenosh to return for the funeral. With a patch over his ruined eye, Cyron looked as if he'd fallen into a particularly sound sleep after a long day's work. All the servants and even some of the Lords were tiptoeing in and out of the room, and speaking in whispers while they were in it.

Blade spent the rest of the day putting things about the castle in order. The next morning, he awoke to find someone shaking him.

«Lord Blade, Lord Blade!»

«Eh, urmph. What…?» He felt like a bear prematurely wakened from hibernation and only a little more intelligent. Grief, anger, and sheer exhaustion had drained him to the point where he could not spring awake instantly as he usually did.

«Lord Blade! The-the woman Sarylla from Castle Issos. She is here. She says she wants to care for the Lady Miera.»

That brought him to full consciousness. «Send her in.»

Sarylla must have used the relay stations to get here as fast as she had. She looked as if she'd been dragged by the horses rather than riding them. She didn't want to talk about her journey, saying only that she'd had much valuable help. Blade suspected that she had traded sex for fresh horses, and didn't want to reveal the names of the men. He dismissed the matter from his mind. She had done no harm, and if she could actually help Miera…

«I was learning to be an herb woman when my father was taken away,» she said. «After a year in Castle Issos, I became doctor to the women of the household. I treated many stab wounds, and more than a few broken heads, when Duke Raskod or other men grew angry or took pleasure in giving pain. Only two women who were not dead when I came to them died in the five years I did this work. I do not say that I know more than the doctors. I do say that I may know some things that they do not, to help the Lady Miera.»

It was grasping at straws, but when there was nothing else to grasp… «Go and do your best for her. I will send word to the doctors that they are to treat you as one of their own.»

«Thank you, Lord Blade. I hope-I hope I may do work good enough to pay back my debt to you.» Now her eyes were on the floor, and Blade could have sworn she was blushing. «How is Lord Gennar?»

«He is well,» said Blade. «He should be returning to Castle Ranit with Duke Chenosh in a few days.» By the time she turned away, Sarylla was definitely blushing.

Lord Gennar returned to Castle Ranit with Chenosh four days later. So did Alsin and more than a hundred other Lords. So did Cheeky.

By that time the questioning of the prisoners was finished. For once in his life, Blade was able to sit and watch men being tortured without feeling particularly sorry for them. They'd done something monstrously evil, knowing that it was evil, knowing that it would lead to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. The only way of saving any of those innocents was to learn everything the guilty ones knew.

By the time Chenosh returned, Blade was able to inform him that at least three of the six mounted «Lords» in the plot were friends of Orric. They'd won over the servant who struck the actual blow by promising to pay his debts to a money lender. The man had been desperate, so afraid he would have to sell his daughters to a brothel to raise the money that he'd been easy game.

The guilty «Lord» died under the torture, and Chenosh had his body thrown to the dogs. The servant was hanged, and after this execution, Chenosh led the way to the Sacred Grove for his grandfather's funeral.

Like Blade's wedding, Duke Cyron's funeral rites were performed as quickly as law, custom, and the dignity of the House of Nainan allowed. The priest threw the torch onto the pyre less than an hour after the body was laid there. As he joined in the Chant for the Dead, Blade again saw the flames light up the metal reflector behind the altar. He'd hoped to return to the Sacred Grove and speak with the priest about that reflector, thinking that perhaps the old man could tell him something about its origins. Was it, as he suspected, part of a spaceship which brought the Feathered Ones to this world?

But now that he had returned to the Sacred Grove and the priest was within earshot, asking about the reflector was the furthest thing from Blade's mind. Lord Leighton would doubtless grumble when he heard that Blade put respect to the dead of Dimension X before research for the Project. Let him grumble. Lord Leighton had never fought among a strange people, never risking his life and shedding his blood for them, never loving one of their women and obeying one of their leaders until he felt himself one of them. He could not understand how such things seemed to Blade.

At the council of war after the funeral, Chenosh announced that he would ride to seek aid from King Handryg of the West Kingdom. «The murderers did not name their paymaster, but if it was not Fedron of the East I will be greatly surprised,» the young Duke explained. «Handryg has a name for hardness and quick temper, but not for base, vile treachery. Also, we will be helping him to strike at the East Kingdom while it is least expecting it. He may take his payment for the war from the Easterners, rather than from us.» He smiled. — «I hope I will not sound unlordly if I say that we should not pay more for King Handryg's help than we must.»