“Oh, how most distressing to your family! My dear fellow, I am so sorry.” Von Namtzen’s voice was full of sympathy. “What will happen to him, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. He will be tried, at a court-martial. And almost certainly will be found guilty. But the sentence…” His voice died away. The memory of Otway being dragged, screaming, to the gallows was one that haunted Grey daily, but he felt superstitiously that to speak of the possibility was to invoke it. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“He will be found guilty,” von Namtzen repeated, frowning. “There were witnesses, I understand, besides Captain Hauptmann?”

“There were. An officer named Custis—and myself.”

Von Namtzen stopped dead, and dropped the sack containing the badger, in order to grip Grey by the arm.

“Grosser Gott!”

“Yes, I believe that sums up the matter very well.”

“They will make you speak—testify—to it?”

“Unless I manage to be killed before he is court-martialed, yes.”

Von Namtzen made a sound of deep consternation, shaking his head.

“What will you do?” he asked, after a bit.

“Live in the moment,” Grey said, nodding at the bloodstained bag. “And hope that when my own moment comes, I, too, will walk out of the earth and see the sky again.”

Von Namtzen didn’t quite laugh, but snorted through his nose, and led the way through a stand of flowering trees that scattered tiny white petals down on them like snow.

“I was most pleased, of course, to hear that your brother’s regiment would be attached to Duke Ferdinand’s troops,” he said, in an apparent attempt at casual conversation. “Not only for their valuable assistance, but because I hoped to have the chance of resuming our friendship.”

“I, too,” Grey said honestly. “I am only sorry that we cannot meet solely as friends, free of such unpleasant considerations as those I have brought you.”

Von Namtzen gave a lopsided shrug.

“We are soldiers,” he said simply. “We will never be free of such things. And it is part of our friendship, is it not?”

Grey was not sure whether he meant their shared profession, or their shared involvement in recurrent unpleasantness, but it was true, in either case, and he laughed ruefully.

“Still,” von Namtzen went on, knitting his heavy brows, “it is most unfortunate.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Not only the…the occurrence.” Von Namtzen made a brief gesture with his missing arm, which unbalanced him, so that he stumbled, but recovered with a muttered “Scheisse!”

“No,” he resumed. “It is unfortunate that it involved both English and Prussian troops. Had it been our men, and only our own officers who witnessed the crime, it could have been dealt with…more quietly.”

Grey glanced at him. This feature of the situation had not escaped him. The English command could not be seen to deal lightly with such a matter, for fear of losing standing with their German allies. He hadn’t thought consciously about the other side, but plainly the same must be true for the Germans.

“Yes. Would you have done—what you did—had there not been the prospect of a notorious trial and public execution?”

“Killed my lieutenant?” Von Namtzen would not accept any softening of reality. “I do not know. Had the men both been German, it is possible that they would simply have been discharged from the army, perhaps imprisoned for a time, perhaps banished. I think there would have been no trial.”

“So it was my presence, in part, that led to this. You have my great regrets.” God only knew how great.

Von Namtzen turned his head then, and gave him a smile of surprising sweetness.

“I would not for one moment regret your presence, John, no matter what the circumstance.” He had never before used Grey’s Christian name without his title, though Grey had often invited him to do so. He spoke it now with a touching shyness, as though not sure he was entitled to such familiarity.

Von Namtzen coughed, as though embarrassed by this declaration, and hastened to cover it.

“Of course, there is no saying what might be done on any occasion. On the one hand, we—the army, that is to say—do not tolerate such perversions. The penalties are severe. On the other”—he glanced at his missing sleeve, and one side of his mouth lifted—“there is Friedrich.”

“Fried—what, the king?”

“Yes. You know the story?” von Namtzen asked.

“Which one?” Grey said dryly. “Such a man is always the focus of tales—and I suppose some might even be true.”

Von Namtzen laughed at that.

“This one is true,” he assured Grey. “My own father was present at the execution.”

“Execution?” Grey echoed, startled. “Whose?”

“Friedrich’s lover.” The Graf’s momentary laughter had left him, but he smiled crookedly. “When he was a young man, his father—the old king, you know?—obliged him to join the army, though he disliked it intensely. A horror of bloodshed. But he formed a deep attachment to another young soldier, and the two decided to flee the country together.”

“They were caught—of course,” Grey said, a sudden hollow opening behind his breastbone.

“Of course.” Stephan nodded. “They were brought back, both charged with desertion and treason, and the old king had Friedrich’s lover beheaded in the courtyard—Friedrich himself forced to watch from a balcony above. He fainted, my father said, even before the sword fell.”

Grey’s own face felt suddenly cold, his jaw prickling with sweat. He swallowed hard, forcing down a sense of dizziness.

“There was some question,” von Namtzen continued, matter-of-fact, “as to whether Friedrich might himself face the same fate, son or not. But in the end…”

“He bowed to the inevitable, and became not only a soldier, but a great soldier.”

Von Namtzen snorted.

“No, but he did—after spending a year in prison—agree to be married. He ignored his wife; he still does. And there are no children,” he added disapprovingly. “But there she is.” He shrugged.

“His father gave him the chateau at Rheinsberg, and he spent many years there, up to his ears in musicians and actors, but then”—he shrugged again—“the old king died.”

And Friedrich, suddenly aware that his inheritance consisted of several tasty chunks of disconnected and vulnerable land, most of them being eyed by the Habsburgs of Austria, had hastily become a soldier. Whereupon he had united his territories, stolen Silesia from the Austrians, and two years before, decided to invade Saxony for good measure, thus making enemies not only of the Austrians and Saxony, but of Russia, Sweden, andthe French.

“And here we all are,” von Namtzen concluded.

“Not a gentleman given to half measures.”

“No, he is not. Nor is he a fool. Whatever the nature of his affections now, they remain private.” Stephan spoke rather grimly, then shook his head, like a dog flinging off water. “Come, it grows soon dark.”

It wouldbe dark soon; already, the air between the trees had thickened, the forest drawing in upon itself. The path before them was still visible, but as they plunged back into the trees, the ground under their feet seemed insubstantial, rocks and tussocks nearly invisible, but unexpectedly solid.

The effort of walking without stumbling kept them from conversation, leaving Grey to reflect on the story of the King of Prussia and his lover—and the irony that the latter had been executed not for crimes of the flesh or seduction of his prince, but for treason. While Captain Bates…He felt as though those sardonic eyes watched him from the forest, and hurried on, feeling darkness at his heels.

Nor was he the only one. He could sense von Namtzen’s disquiet; see it, in the awkward shifting of his broad shoulders, tensed as though fearing some pursuit.

In a few moments, they reached the edge of the clearing in which the lodge stood, and emerged with a shared sense of relief into a soft haze of lavender, a pool of light still cupped between the forest’s hands.