Mouse stood in the opening of the tent, watching the thick drops of rain fall from the sky. She had been walking about the tournament grounds when it had begun, the sky quickly darkening and opening itself up into a thunderous downpour, before lightening into what was now a steady summer shower. She had sought refuge in the nearest tent, a patchwork of blue and yellow that bore the crests of Tuilidge and Falk, and it was here she had been received by Sir Gerold. The knight had given her a blanket to dry her hair and another to wrap round her shoulders, and though she had protested his abstaining from the merriment of his friends, who sat laughing and drinking further within, he insisted on keeping Mouse company near the entrance of the tent.

  The tent itself was large enough to accommodate at least twenty, by Mouse’s estimation, and though there was a curtain to separate the forward sitting area from the main part of the interior, it had been tied back on one side to allow the air to travel more freely. There were sprigs hung at every post, and the whole place smelled pleasantly of mead and juniper.

  Mouse eyed the keep in the distance and the path she would needs must cross to reach it. She was some hundred yards from the nearest gate, and the steps of the keep another hundred past that.

  “Best wait, my lady,” Sir Gerold said, no doubt marking Mouse’s impatience. “You would not like to catch cold in such foul weather.”

  “Aye, it’s warmer still within my tent, come and see, why don’t you?” shouted one of the men in the back. His remark was followed by laughter, but it was quickly silenced by a stern look from Sir Gerold.

  “I pray you will forgive my friend, my lady,” the knight said, turning back to Mouse. “On such a day, the men have little to do besides drink, and it tends to cause them to forget their manners, however little they had to begin with.”

  Mouse forced herself to smile, a signal of her understanding and demonstration of her patience, both, regrettably, ladylike virtues which she felt she owed the knight in light of her circumstance.

  “Five minutes more and I’m certain the skies will clear,” Sir Gerold said, bending his neck to look up into the ominous grey clouds. But five minutes came and went, and then ten, and fifteen, and if anything, the rain only seemed to fall harder, as though it had determined itself to contradict the over-confident knight. Thick, heavy sheets now battered the banners outside and pattered against the sides of the tent, making it difficult to hear anything short of a shout, but that did not stop the dozen or so men in the tent of Tuilidge and Falk.

  “Did you hear there’s to be commoners this year,” Mouse could hear one of the men in the belly of the tent say to the others, his voice booming above the rain.

  “Aye, and why not?” said another. “A Toth commoner is still better than a son of Falk.”

  “Better than a lord of Falk!” chime in a third.

  There were cheers of agreement and jeers of dissent.

  “You mean to tell me I might be riding against a cooper?”

  “Or a baker.”

  “Or a butcher.”

  “You might want to be careful in the lists, Leo; if that last one bests you, he’s like to make a meal out of Gallofei.”

  “What about the baker? You mean to tell me you never heard of horse pie?”

  This was met with a round of laughter, as the men continued to jibe and joke.

  Sir Gerold had provided Mouse a sheepskin sling on which to sit while she waited for the rain outside to stop. She had declined his offers of food and drink at least a dozen times and watched him now, just out of reach of the lashing rain, as he meticulously polished his crest, all the while listening to the rambling chatter of the men. She had been able to work out that at least some of them were knights, but there was like also a few squires among them.

  “Oi, where is Hugo anyway?” one of the men asked.

  “You didn’t hear?” replied another. “He died.”

  “Nearly died,” a third chimed in.

  “What, Hugo Giroux?”

  “The same. Poor fellow met the end of a spear on the highway home from the north.”

  “I heard it was a cross.”

  “It never was.”

  “So it was!”

  “No it wasn’t, you daft curtain! It was a spear to the ribs.”

  For a moment, Mouse thought of walking back and settling the argument then and there, but she worried that doing so might somehow ruin the fun of listening to their conjecture. Besides, if she kept quiet, she might learn something while she was there.

  “Anyhow, rumor is he was saved by the crown itself, the Rising Sun of Aros.”

  “What, Her Majesty? How did she manage that?”

  “Well, she was there, wasn’t she?”

  “On the highway?”

  “Aye, and so she was.”

  “So what did she do, tax him back to good health?”

  “She carried him off to safety.”

  “What, on her shoulder?”

  “On her horse.”

  “On her breast.”

  “On the horse’s breast?”

  “On Her Majesty’s.”

  “Aye, now there’s a breast I wouldn’t mind being carried on.”

  “There’s one I wouldn’t mind dying on.”

  “A little less noise there, if you please,” Sir Gerold shouted over his shoulder. The knight shifted in his own sling, working the cloth methodically across the ridges of his house’s lion and star. Mouse could not help but be amused by the fact that the men so casually referred to the Empress while she herself sat right there. And though they could not very well see her from where they sat, even Sir Gerold seemed to pay little heed to the resemblance.

  “Gods, I love a dark-haired woman,” one of the men continued, ignoring Sir Gerold’s reprimand.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I preferred the golden-haired ones,” replied another.

  “I haven’t been with a woman in so long I don’t even care if she has hair,” said a third.

  “Hair where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Aye, truth is, I’d do with just about anyone.”

  “Trouble is, no one wants to do with you!”

  “Oi, you know the difference between a woman and a lady?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “Well, I suppose it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On who’s asking.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “And I’m telling you, there’s no difference.”

  “So there is, if you know where to look.”

  “There’s only one place I’m looking.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Right between the—"

  “For gods’ sake, would you have some decency and shut your wagging maws!” Sir Gerold suddenly bellowed, rising and turning, red-faced, to the men in the back of the tent. “There is a lady present!”

  The tent fell quiet for a moment.

  “Begging your pardon,” one of the men said in a rather subdued voice, urging the others to quickly follow suit. But of course, the silence did not last long.

  When at last the rain had eased and the dark wall of clouds had begun to break apart, Mouse thanked the men of Tuilidge and Falk for their hospitality, promising to repay it should she ever have occasion. If there was one thing she had learned from a life of diplomacy, it was to give everyone the chance to become your friend before allowing them the opportunity to become your enemy. After all, one never knew when that friendship, however seemingly inconsequential at the time of forming, might come to have its benefits. So it was with a grateful smile that she rose to leave. The fields would be a muddy mess and the crossing little short of treacherous, but Mouse might have preferred it to Sir Gerold’s insistence upon seeing her safely to the keep. She did not like to trouble the knight any more than she already had; he was clearly mortified to have her among the men when they were behaving so waggishly, and indeed, he seemed to mind a great deal more than Mouse did.

  Safely inside the sanctuary of the keep, Mouse thanked Sir Gerold once more, before rushing up the stairs to her rooms in eager anticipation of changing into something dry and planting herself in front of the fire. She had found a certain fascination in listening to the men talk. She often forgot that world traveled just as quickly outside of the capital as within it and was intrigued by the conflicting reports about Sir Hugo. But what was most interesting to her was what they did not say. The entire time she was there, no one once spoke of the General or his campaign against the Empress. Perhaps, Mouse thought to herself with a laugh, they had in fact been on their best behavior. Or perhaps, and equally as likely, they simply did not care.

  As Mouse trudged her way down the hall, her shoes squelching against the floors, she saw something that sent a chill down her spin. It was Johannes, and if she was not mistaken, he had just come from inside her rooms. She stopped in her tracks, hoping that he would not turn her way, and indeed, he went toward the other end of the hall, but it was with a pronounced discomfort that Mouse proceeded to enter her chambers. There, one of the maids who tended her rooms from time to time and had been with her at Pothes Mar, was stirring the fire.

  “Lette,” Mouse said, something of concern in her voice. “Was Lord Johannes just in my rooms?”

  “No, my lady,” the maid replied over her shoulder. “’Twas no one but myself in here this past hour.”

  Mouse’s brow knit itself together with worry.

  “But I saw him,” she protested, “just now, in the hall. He was coming from in here.”

  “There must be some mistake, my lady,” said the maid. “As I tell you, I’ve been alone.”

  Mouse shook her head, confused. She knew what she had seen, and she had seen Lord Johannes coming from inside her rooms.

  “Are you certain he was not here?” she tried again. “Perhaps he only came in to ask a question or to look for something.”

  The maid set aside the splinter and busied herself now with sweeping up the cinders.

  “Assuredly, my lady, he was not here,” she said without looking up.

  Mouse watched the maid a moment, the unease that had taken root when she had first caught sight of the nobleman now beginning to grow.

  “Lette,” she said quietly. “I should like to be alone now.”

  The woman promptly set aside her broom and left, with hardly a glance upward on her way out. Once she had gone, Mouse hurried over to her desk, sliding out the drawer and opening the tome to see that its secret remained safe. Sure enough, the box was still within, and inside of that the vial, seemingly undisturbed. Mouse heaved a sigh of relief. She looked at the dark violet liquid, glistening innocently in its little glass vial. She could not go on this way; she must find a way to rid herself of the stuff before it was discovered in her keeping, or worse, fell into unscrupulous hands.

  Val Hector stood in the archway of the keep, watching the sheets of rain come pouring down from the sky, her small frame silhouetted by the light of the braziers.

  “What a shame,” she murmured with a sigh. “I should have liked to see the tournament grounds before they became one giant tract of mud.” She turned and gave Mouse a smile of resignation.

  The rain had started again not long after Mouse found her way indoors, at times easing just long enough to inspire some hope as to its stopping, before beginning again in force. It was the most rain they had seen in weeks, and already the river that ran west of the city had swollen nearly to flooding.

  “You know, there are some who think the rain brings good fortune,” said Mouse. But to this, the Val laughed.

  “That’s quite an optimistic thing to say,” she smiled, turning back to the archway. “I rather hate the rain.”

  The two stood for a moment longer in silence, watching men struggle to haul their carts through mud as children ran barefoot in circles around them.

  Mouse had been glad to run into the Val. She looked after the girl earlier that day, and it was only upon being unable to find her that she had ventured out onto the grounds.

  “Lady Maudeleine,” Val Hector said after some minutes of quiet, “I hope you do not think me cunning after that somewhat—” she paused, “—unforgiving interview with the Empress.”

  Mouse looked down at the girl in surprise.

  “Nonsense,” she replied. “It is in no way incumbent upon you to offer a public explanation for every audience you should choose to hold. You do have free will, despite what the Empress would have you believe.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of the Val’s mouth, while outside, the children had begun slinging handfuls of mud at one another, showing little concern for anyone else in the proximity and little discernment in their aim.

  “That’s very generous of you,” the Val said. “But nonetheless, I should not like for you think of me as someone who keeps secrets, someone who is deliberately deceitful.” She stopped and turned to look up at Mouse, who stood a full head taller than herself. “I meant what I said when I told you that I should like for us to be friends.”

  With this, Mouse felt some of her former reserve slowly dissolve. She had been beginning to doubt the Val’s sincerity, to question whether she was the sort of person Mouse had initial credited her as being, and she found herself now relieved in the confirmation that she had been right to begin with.

  “Even friends are allowed a degree of privacy,” Mouse said.

  She watched a handful of mud land smack against the side of the cart, just as a harried looking woman seized one of the young boys by the wrist and tried to drag him away. Her attempts, however, were futile, for as soon as the boy resisted her, her feet gave way in the sodden ground and down she went in the mud.

  Neither Mouse nor the Val could keep from laughing, even as the poor woman began to throw mud of her own at the children who ran about, sliding and stomping in the muck.

  “The thing is,” the Val continued once she had regained herself, “Her Majesty was not entirely wrong in her estimation of me. I did have a meeting with the secretary to the Prince of Umbrec, something which I was eager to keep to myself, but it was not for the purpose the Empress supposed it might be. It was because of certain geographic similarities between our two states, nothing more.”

  “You do not have to explain to me—”

  “But I want to,” protested the Val. “I want you to understand. You see, my meeting with Umbrec had nothing to do marriage or unions or pacts, or really, anything to do with the Prince himself. But I cannot deny that I have been given leave by my council to pursue alliances through any means available to me.”

  She gave Mouse a pointed look, forcing her to acknowledge the implications of the statement.

  “I see,” said Mouse, unsure how otherwise to respond.

  The children had at last been chased away by a squire, who followed them to their hiding place behind a bush. Or so it seemed, until the children returned with armfuls of sticks, which they placed beneath the wheels of the cart to help the cartman, who had all but given up.

  The Val reached out and placed a hand on Mouse’s arm, drawing Mouse’s attention away from the children and toward herself.

  “Lady Maudeleine,” she said, her face now a mask of sobriety, “my chief concern—my only concern, is the welfare of my people and my state. I was quite serious when I said that the Chatti lands strive for independence.” She allowed her arm to fall to her side. “I am not a lady, like you,” she said. “I was not born to this.” There was something in the words that twisted strangely inside of Mouse, even as the girl continued. “I am a Val. I have been chosen by my people. I have been chosen to carry out a purpose, to serve a duty. And though I sometimes question their judgement in the matter,” she shook her head. “I will tell you this: I will not fail them.”