As old as Wencel’s horse? Older, surely, in a sense, for his wolf had been abroad, repeatedly reincarnated, for four hundred extra years before being so bloodily harvested. Part of that time had been spent high up in the Cantons, judging by the pictures of cold peaks that lingered in his mind. A long happy period, several domesticated wolf-lives, in some tiny hamlet in a forgotten vale where seasons and generations turned in a slow wheel… The attrition of mischance might have cut short the accumulation of wolf souls, yet had not. Which suggested in turn that Someone with a long, long attention span might have been manipulating those chances. Must have been, his mirthless reason corrected this.

If he ever saw the god again, he could ask, Ingrey supposed. I could ask now. I could pray. He had no desire to; praying held all the appeal of thrusting his hand into the holy fire on the temple plinth and holding it there. Talking to the gods had been a much more comfortable proposition when there had seemed no danger of Their talking back.

He lay back and sought within himself for that millrace-current sense of Ijada. The quiet song of it calmed him instantly. She was not, at this moment, in pain, nor unduly fatigued, except for a tense piling-up of boredom. It did not follow that she was safe; the banal comfort of the narrow house was deceptive, that way. Horseriver had named this link the unintended relict of his murderous geas, and it might be so. Was not some good salvaged from evil, from time to time? He must contrive some way to see her again, secretly and soon. And to communicate. Could this subtle perception be made more explicit? One yank for yes, two yanks for no. Well, perhaps not that, but there must be something.

His brooding was interrupted by a page rapping on his door, bidding him to attend upon the earl. Ingrey armed himself, grabbed up his long court cloak, and descended to the entry hall, where he found Horseriver, who could only have come in a short time ago, preparing to go out again.

With some low-voiced instructions, the earl finished dispatching an anxious groom, then granted Ingrey a civil nod.

“Where away, my lord?”

“The hallow king’s hall.”

“Didn’t you just come from there?”

Wencel nodded. “It is nearly time. I think the king will not last the night. There is a particular waxy look to the skin”—Wencel passed a hand over his face—”that is a very distinctive herald to these sorts of deaths.”

And Horseriver ought to know. From both sides, Ingrey realized. They were briefly alone in the hall, the servants having been sent to hurry Fara; Ingrey lowered his voice. “Ought I to suspect you of some uncanny assassination?”

Wencel shook his head, apparently not the least offended by the suggestion. “His death comes quite without need of any man’s assistance. At one time—long ago—I might have sought to speed it. Or, more vainly, to retard it. Now I just wait. A flicker of days, and it is done.” He vented a long, quiet sigh.

Death, an old familiar, did not disturb Wencel, and yet his languid weariness seemed a mask, to Ingrey. He was tense with some hidden anticipation, revealed, barely, only when his eyes repeatedly checked the staircase for some sign of Fara. At length the princess appeared: pale, chill, cloaked in black.

Ingrey, bearing a lantern, led the way through the darkening streets of Kingstown; the sole retainer, he noted, called to this duty. The evening air was chill and damp—the cobbles would be slippery with dew by midnight—but overhead the first stars shone down from a rainless sky. Wencel escorted his wife on his arm with the unfailing cold courtesy that was his studied habit. Ingrey extended his senses—all of his senses—yet found no new threat looming in the shadows. Indeed, no. We are the threats, Wencel and I.

Torches in brackets lit the entrance to the hallow king’s hall in a flickering glow. Only the name recalled the old forest architectures of timber and thatch, for it was as much a stone palace as any other Easthome noble pile built during the latter days of Darthacan glory. Guardsmen hurried to swing wide the wrought-iron gates and bow apprehensively to the princess and her husband. The sentries seemed faintly mortified by how useless all their pikes and blades were to protect their lord from what stalked him tonight. As distant as they still were from the king’s bedchamber, the servants’ voices were hushed and tremulous as they escorted the party along the dim and musty halls.

Ahead, lamplight spilled into the corridor and reflected off the polished floorboards. Ingrey took a steeling breath and turned to follow the earl and the princess within.

The hallow king’s bedchamber was less crowded than Ingrey had imagined it. One green-robed physician and his acolyte sat near the head of the canopied bed with an air of depressed quietude that acknowledged all their medical efforts now vain. A divine in the gray garb of the Father’s Order waited also, in an inverse mood of stretched readiness not yet called upon. In a room beyond an antechamber, out of sight and, thankfully, muffled by the intervening walls, a five-voice chorus of Temple singers started a hymn. The quintet sounded hoarse and tired; perhaps they would take a rest soon.

Ingrey studied the king in the bed. He was not weighted by such dark intrusions as Ingrey’s or Wencel’s, not shaman, nor sorcerer, nor saint; he was but a man, if a riveting one even in this last hour. He was a long way now from the Stagthorne scion Hetwar nostalgically spoke of from his childhood, who had taken the prince-marshal’s banner from his own father’s kingly hand to earn early victory and reputation in a now half-forgotten border clash with Darthaca. When Ingrey had first returned to the Weald in Hetwar’s train, the king had been hale and vigorous despite his graying head and all the sorrows of his life. The past months of creeping illness had aged him speedily, as if to make up for lost time.

Now his final sleep was upon him. Ingrey hoped Fara had exchanged whatever last words she wanted with her father earlier, for there would be no more tonight. The thin, spotted skin, an ugly yellow shade, indeed bore that waxy sheen Horseriver had named the harbinger of finality. More: the king’s breathing was harsh and hesitant, each breath drawn in and released, followed by a pause that drew all eyes, until the chest heaved again, and the gazes dropped away.

Fara’s face was ashy but composed; she signed the Five, placed a formal kiss on the king’s slick brow, and stood back. The Father’s divine dared to place a consoling hand upon her shoulder, and murmur, “He had a good life, my lady. Be not afraid.”

The glance Fara cast him was equally devoid of both fear and consolation, or indeed, much expression at all. Ingrey was impressed that she did not snarl in return; if offered such a platitude in such a moment, he would have been tempted to draw steel and run the divine through. She merely murmured, “Where is my brother Biast? He should be here. And the archdivine.”

“He was here earlier, my lady, for a good long time, and will return shortly. I expect the archdivine and my lord Hetwar will be accompanying him.”

She nodded once and shrugged away from him. His hand hesitated in air, as if to offer another consolatory pawing, but fortunately he thought better of it, stepping away to leave the princess in her stolid sorrow.

Horseriver stood watching all this with his feet braced a little apart, the picture of a supporting spouse and lord. His face seemed no more stern than the occasion demanded. It was only to Ingrey’s eye that he seemed crouched like a cat at a mousehole. What more was about to happen in this room than the long-expected death of an aged man, even if aged king? Horseriver had been hovering in Easthome for weeks. What did he await, besides the end of this vigil? And if his presence here was so vital to his schemes, how much had it maddened him to have to break away and tend to the untimely intrusion of Boleso’s funeral?