ith the prudent caution that was the truest wellspring of his character, Alberico of Barbadior began thinking through his actions of the next hours and days. The high gods of the Empire knew this far peninsula was a place of constant danger and needed stern governing, but the gods, who were not blind, could see that he knew how to give it what was needful. And it was growing more and more possible that the Emperor's advisers back home, who were no more sightless than the gods, would see the same things.
And the Emperor was old.
Alberico withdrew his thoughts from these familiar, too seductive channels. He made himself focus on detail again; detail was everything in matters such as this. The neat steps of his planning clicked into place like beads on a djarra string as he rode. Drily, precisely, he assembled the orders he would give. The only commands that caused him an inward flicker of emotion were the ones concerning Tomasso bar Sandre. These, at least, did not have to be made public and they would not be. Only the confession and its revealing details needed to be known outside his palace walls. Whatever took place in certain rooms underground could be extremely private indeed. He surprised himself a little with the anticipation he felt.
At one point he remembered that he'd wanted the hunting lodge torched when they left. Smoothly he adjusted his thinking on that. Let the lesser Sandreni and their servants find the dead when they came at dawn. Let them wonder and fear. The doubt would only last a little while.
Then he would cause everything to be made extremely clear.

Chapter 5

“OH, MORIAN," ALESSAN WHISPERED, WISTFUL REGRET INFUSING his voice. "I could have sent him to your judgment even now. A child could have put an arrow in his eye from here."
Not this child, Devin thought ruefully, gauging the distance and the light from where they were hidden among the trees north of the ribbon of road the Barbadians had just ridden along. He looked with even more respect than before at Alessan and the crossbow he'd picked up from a cache they'd looped past on the way here.
"She will claim him when she is ready," Baerd said prosaically. "And you are the one who has spent his life saying that it will be to no good if either one of them dies too soon."
Alessan grunted. "Did I shoot?" he asked pointedly.
Baerd's teeth flashed briefly in the moonlight. "I would have stopped you in any case."
Alessan swore succinctly. Then, a moment later, relaxed into quiet amusement. The two men had a manner with each other that spoke to long familiarity. Catriana, Devin saw, had not smiled. Certainly not at him. On the other hand, he reminded himself, he was supposed to be the one who was angry. The present circumstances made it a little hard though. He felt anxious and proud and excited, all at once.
He was also the only one of the four of them who hadn't noticed Tomasso, bound at wrist and ankle to his horse.┅┅
"We'd better check the lodge," Baerd said as the transient mood slipped away. "Then I think we will have to travel very fast. Sandre's son will name you and the boy."
"We had better have a talk about the boy first," Catriana said in a tone that made it suddenly very easy for Devin to reclaim his anger.
"The boy?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. "I think you have evidence to the contrary." He let his gaze rest coldly on hers, and was rewarded to see her flush and turn away. Briefly rewarded.
"Unworthy, Devin," Alessan said. "I hope not to hear that note from you again. Catriana violated all I know of her nature in doing what she did this morning. If you are intelligent enough to have come here you will be more than intelligent enough to now understand why she did it. You might suspend your own pride long enough to think about how she is feeling."
It was mildly said, but Devin felt as if he had just been punched in the stomach. Swallowing awkwardly, he looked from Alessan back to Catriana, but her gaze was fixed on the stars,