The night of Pelletier’s initiation into the Noublesso de los Seres was as sharp and clear in his mind as if it was yesterday. The shimmering robes of gold and the bleached white altar cloth, as dazzling as the forts that glinted high on the hills above Aleppo among the cypress trees and orange groves. The smell of the incense, the rise and fall of the voices whispering in the darkness. Illumination.

That night, another lifetime ago, or so it seemed to Pelletier now, was when he had looked into the heart of the labyrinth and made a vow to protect the secret with his life.

He pulled the candle closer. Even without the authenticity of the seal, there could be no doubt that the letter was from Harif. He would recognize his hand anywhere, the distinctive elegance of his letters and the exact proportions of his script.

Pelletier shook his head, trying to dislodge the memories threatening to overwhelm him. He took a deep breath, then slipped his knife under the seal. The wax split open with a soft crack. He smoothed the parchment flat.

The letter was brief. Across the top of the sheet were the symbols Pelletier remembered from the yellow walls of the labyrinth cave in the hills outside the Holy City. Written in the ancient language of Harif’s ancestors, they meant nothing except to those initiated into the Noublesso.

Pelletier read the words aloud, the familiar sounds reassuring him, before turning to Harif’s letter.

Fraire

It is time. Darkness is coming to these lands. There is malice in the air, an evil that will destroy and corrupt all that is good. The texts are no longer safe in the plains of the Pays d’Oc. It is time for the Trilogy to be reunited. Your brother awaits you in Besiers, your sister in Carcassona. It falls to you to carry the books to a place of greater safety.

Make haste. The summer passes to Navarre will be closed by Toussaint, perhaps sooner if the snows come early. I shall expect you by the Feast Day of Sant-Miquel.

Pas a pas, se va luenh.

The chair creaked as Pelletier leaned sharply back. It was no more than he expected. Harif’s instructions were clear. He asked no more than Pelletier had once sworn to give. But yet, he felt as if his soul had been sucked out of his body leaving only a hollow space.

The pledge he had given to guard the books had been made willingly, but in the simplicity of youth. Now, at the end of his middle years, it was more complicated. He had fashioned a different life for himself in Carcassonne. He had other allegiances, others he loved and served.

Only now did he realize how completely he’d persuaded himself that the moment of reckoning would not come in his lifetime. That he would never be forced to choose between his loyalty and responsibility to Viscount Trencavel and his obligation to the Noublesso.

No man could serve two masters with honor. If he did as Harif commanded, it would mean abandoning the viscount at the hour of his greatest need. Yet every moment he stayed at Raymond-Roger’s side, he would be failing in his duty to the Noublesso.

Pelletier read the letter again, praying for a solution to present itself. This time, certain words, certain phrases stood out: “Your brother awaits you in Besiers.”

Harif could only mean Simeon. But in Beziers? Pelletier lifted the goblet to his lips and drank, tasting nothing. How strange that Simeon had come so forcefully into his mind today, after many years of absence.

A twist of fate? Coincidence? Pelletier believed in neither. Yet how to account for the dread that had swept through him when Alais had described the body of the man lying murdered in the waters of the Aude? There was no reason to imagine it would be Simeon, yet he’d been so certain.

And this: “your sister in Carcassona.”

Puzzled, Pelletier traced a pattern in the light surface of dust on the wooden table with his finger. A labyrinth.

Could Harif have appointed a woman as a guardian? Had she been here in Carcassonne, under his nose, all this time? He shook his head. It could not be.

Alais stood at her window, waiting for Guilhem to return. The sky over Carcassonne was a deep, velvet blue, casting a soft mantle over the land. The dry, evening wind from the north, the Cers, was blowing gently down from the mountains, rustling the leaves on the trees and the reeds on the banks of the Aude, bringing the promise of fresher air along with it.

There were pinpricks of light shining in Sant-Miquel and Sant-Vicens. The cobbled streets of the Cite itself were alive with people eating and drinking, telling stories and singing songs of love and valor and loss. Around the corner from the main square, the fires of the blacksmith’s forge still burned.

Waiting. Always waiting.

Alais had rubbed her teeth with herbs to make them whiter and basted a small sachet of forget-me-nots into the neck of her dress for perfume. The chamber was filled with a sweet aroma of burning lavender.

The Council had ended some time ago and Alais had expected Guilhem to come or at least to send word to her. Fragments of conversation drifted up from the courtyard below like wisps of smoke. She caught a glimpse of her sister Oriane’s husband, Jehan Congost, as he scuttled across the courtyard. She counted seven or eight chevaliers of the household and their ecuyers, rushing purposefully to the forge. Earlier, she’d noticed her father reprimanding a young boy who had been hanging around the chapel.

Of Guilhem there was no sign.

Alais sighed, frustrated at having confined herself to her chamber for nothing. She turned back to face the room, wandering randomly from table to chair and back again, her restless fingers looking for something to do. She stopped in front of her loom and stared at the small tapestry she was working on for Dame Agnes, a complicated bestiary of wild creatures and birds with sweeping tails that slithered and clawed their way up a castle wall. Usually, when the weather or her responsibilities in the household kept her confined indoors, Alais found solace in such delicate work.

Tonight she couldn’t settle to anything. Her needles sat untouched at her frame, the thread Sajhe had given her unopened beside it. The potions she’d prepared earlier from the angelica and comfrey were neatly labeled and stored in rows on a wooden shelf in the coolest and darkest part of the room. She’d picked up and examined the wooden board until she was sick of the sight of it and her fingers sore with tracing the pattern of the labyrinth over and over. Waiting, waiting.

“Es totjorn lo meteis,” she murmured. Always the same song.

Alais walked over to the glass and peered at her reflection. A small, serious heart-shaped face with intelligent brown eyes and pale cheeks looked back at her, neither plain nor beautiful. Alais adjusted the neckline of her dress, as she’d seen other girls do, trying to make it more fashionable. Perhaps if she sewed a piece of lace to…

A sharp knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

Perfin. At last. “I’m here,” she called out.

The door opened. The smile slid from her face.

“Francois. What is it?”

“Intendant Pelletier requests your presence, Dame.”

“At this hour?”

Francois shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

“He is waiting on you in his chamber. I think there is some need of haste, Alais.”

She glanced at him, surprised by his use of her name. She had never known him to make such a mistake before. “Is something the matter?” she asked quickly. “Is my father unwell?”

Francois hesitated. “He is much… preoccupied, Dame. He would be glad of your company presently.”

She sighed. “I seem to have been out of step all day.”