Or, perhaps, to protect him from worse and subtler things? Or was Biast’s diversion to the border in this crisis engineered by other persuaders? Was the print of Horseriver’s hoof anywhere in this?

Biast sighed. “In the fullness of time I expected to receive the crown from my father’s own hands, in his lifetime, like every Stagthorne king before me. He’d had the election and coronation of my older brother Byza all planned out three years ago, before Byza’s untimely death. Now I must grasp with my own hands, or let the crown fall.”

“Byza’s was a sudden illness, wasn’t it?” Ingrey had been gone from Easthome on an early courier mission for Hetwar to the Low Ports, and had missed that royal funeral. Biast had received the prince-marshal’s banner that had belonged to his brother before him only a few weeks later. Had Boleso dwelt too unhealthily upon the precedent?

“Lockjaw.” Biast shuddered in memory. “I was in Byza’s train at his naval camp near Helmharbor at the time. He was preparing some new ships for sea trials. Several men were stricken so. Five gods spare me from such a fate. It gave me an aversion to deathbeds that lingers still. My heart fails me at the thought of facing another. I pray five times a day for my father’s recovery.”

Ingrey had last seen the dying hallow king in person some weeks ago, just before his palsy stroke. He had been yellow-skinned, belly-swollen, and cheek-sunken even then, his movements heavy and voice low and slurred. “I think we must pray for other blessings for him, now.”

Biast stared away, not disputing this. “The charge against Boleso, if it is not just Cumril’s calumny, has left me wondering whom I can trust.” His gaze, returning to Ingrey, made Ingrey feel rather odd.

“Each man according to his measure, I suppose.”

“This presumes an ability justly to measure men, which begs the question. Have you taken the measure of my brother-in-law yet?”

“Not, um, entirely.”

“Is he a danger like Boleso?”

“He’s… smarter.” And so, Ingrey was beginning to be convinced, was Biast. “No insult intended,” Ingrey added, in a belated attempt at tact.

Biast grimaced. “At least, I trust, he is not so mad.”

Silence.

“One does so trust—doesn’t one?”

“I trust no one,” Ingrey evaded.

“Not even the gods?”

“Them least of all.”

“Mm.” Biast rubbed his neck. “Well, the impending kingship does not give me joy, under the circumstances, but I am not at all inclined to hand it on, over my dead body, to monsters.”

“Good, my lord,” said Ingrey. “Hold to that.”

Symark, who had been listening to this exchange with arms folded, rose and wandered to the window, evidently to check the clock of the sun, for he turned and gave his master an inquiring look. Biast nodded in return and stood with a tired grunt; Ingrey came to his feet likewise.

Biast ran a hand through his hair in a gesture copied or caught, Ingrey was fairly sure, from Hetwar. “Have you any other advice for me this day, Lord Ingrey?”

Ingrey was only a year or two older than Biast; surely the prince could not see him as an authority for that reason. “In all matters of policy, you are better advised by Hetwar, my lord.”

“And other matters?”

Ingrey hesitated. “For Temple politics, Fritine is most informed, but beware his favor to his kin. For, ah, practical theology, see Lewko.”

Biast appeared to muse for a moment over the unsettling implications of that practical. “Why?”

Ingrey’s fingers stretched out, then tapped across the ball of his thumb in order, little finger to index. “Because the Thumb touches all four other fingers.” The words seemed to fall out of his mouth from nowhere, and he almost jerked back, startled.

Biast too seemed to find the words fraught beyond their simplicity, for he gave Ingrey a peculiar stare, unconsciously clenching his hand. “I shall hold that in my mind. Guard my sister.”

“I’ll do my utmost, my lord.”

Biast gave him a nod, gestured Symark ahead of him, and went out.

Ingrey scouted the mansion to discover Fara laid down in her chambers and tended by her ladies as expected, and the earl gone out to the hallow king’s hall. So what drew Wencel there that was more riveting than awaiting the news from the inquest? That he had not escorted his wife to the judges’ bench was no surprise; Wencel quietly avoided Temple Hill, in such a routine fashion as to occasion no remark. But whatever menace the earl concealed, he’d been attending on his sick father-in-law for weeks without Ingrey’s supervision. Ingrey hesitated to pursue him there. Yet.

The situation seemed to have more need for wits than a strong sword arm, and if the body was neglected, the brain flagged, too, so Ingrey took himself to the earl’s kitchen to forage a meal, which was served to him along with certain oblique complaints. After that, he tracked down Tesko and bullied him into giving back to the scullions the money he’d won cheating at dice. His servant temporarily cowed, Ingrey then had him snip and extract the stitches from his scalp and rebandage his sword hand. The long and ragged tear in his discolored skin seemed closed, but still tender, and he pressed the gauze wrapping warily after Tesko tied it off. This should have healed by now.

Autumn dusk crept through the window embrasures as Ingrey sat on his new bed and meditated. The princess’s impending bereavement curtailed the sort of society that had enlivened Hetwar’s palace of an evening, or demanded Ingrey’s services as an escort for its lord or lady. If Earl Horseriver chose to send him off on some untimely courier mission, how then could he carry out his princely mandate to guard Fara, or his self-imposed task to save Ijada? Get one of Hetwar’s men to ride, and remain in Easthome sneaking about spying? The notion seemed stuffed with disastrous complications. His public duty to obey the earl was a pitfall waiting to swallow him, it seemed to Ingrey, and he was not sure Hetwar had quite thought it through.

Could he defy Horseriver? Each of them, it seemed, had been gifted with kindred powers. Horseriver was vastly more practiced, but was he stronger? And what did strength mean, in that boundless hallowed space where visions took seeming shape?

How, for that matter, did one practice, and upon what? Ingrey’s battle-madness could not be rehearsed at all; it came only at need, and in deadly earnest. And the weirding voice—could its suggestions be resisted? Defied? Broken? Did they wear off in time, like Hallana’s demon-sorcery had upon the be-pigged man? Ingrey could not imagine finding glad volunteers to test his talents upon. Though Hallana, he suddenly suspected, would be all for the trial, and Oswin would take careful notes. The image made him smile despite himself.

How old is my wolf? The question niggled him, suddenly. Warily, he turned his perceptions inward, and once more, the sensation was akin to trying to see his own eyes. The accumulated wolf souls seemed to meld together into a smooth unity, as though their boundaries were more permeable somehow; wolves became Wolf in a way that Earls Horseriver had failed to achieve in that tormented soul’s cannibal descent through the generations of his human kin. Ingrey sifted the fragmentary lupine memories that had come to him, both in that first terrible initiation and in later dreams. The viewpoint was odd, and scents seemed more sharply remembered than sights. A sufficiently impoverished rural village of recent days was hardly to be distinguished from a forest town of the lost times.

But suddenly a most peculiar memory surfaced, of chewing with wolf-puppy teeth upon a piece of boiled leather armor, a cuirass almost bigger than he was. The chastisement when he’d been caught at it did not diminish the satisfaction to his sore mouth. The armor had been quite new, dragged to a corner of some dim and smoky hall. The design was distinctive, the breast decoration more so, a silhouette of a wolf’s head with gaping jaws burned into the leather with hot iron. My wolf is as old as the Old Weald, and then some.