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still covered the sky. Arcolin had the Company paraded in the main court, cohort by cohort, to take their oaths. He gave the same speech to the recruits the Duke had given to every year’s recruit intake. The veterans, who had already been told as much as he knew, gave their oaths willingly, as near as he could tell.
    The Vonja agents chose to ride with Val’s cohort to Burningmeed and travel on to Vérella by themselves. Arcolin spent the evening with one of the Company clerks, collecting the documents he would need the next day, making copies of those he would need in Vérella, rechecking his lists.

     
    N ext morning, the storm had blown past, leaving a thin skim of high cloud. After breakfast, the other two cohorts left, Valichi’s down the road to Duke’s East, and Cracolnya’s straight across country toward the rising sun.
    Stammel had Arcolin’s cohort busy at once, cleaning barracks Arcolin was sure the others had left spotless, but it kept the troopsbusy. Arcolin gathered the bundle of charters and other documents he needed, and rode for Duke’s West first.
    “Can you hold a Duke’s Court before you go?” Foretson asked, as he signed the charter under Arcolin’s name.
    “I’m not a duke,” Arcolin said. “Authorization for a Ducal Court would have to come from Vérella. All I can do is hold petty court, same as usual.”
    “That would help—if you can stay a glass, I’ll have Donag and Arv come in—they’re wanting a ruling on a field boundary.”
    Once court began, others came in with problems; it was after midday when he rode for Duke’s East, to do it all over again. This time he set up in the Red Fox common room. Duke’s East had fewer cases for petty court than Duke’s West, and he made it back to the stronghold before dark. There he found everything ready for next morning’s departure.

     
    A nother clear morning. Arcolin looked around the inner court, imagining it as his—if the Crown permitted—and strode out the gate to the main court, where Stammel had the cohort ready, in marching order. Arbad held the roan ambler. Arcolin mounted and looked back at his cohort—the young faces still unblooded, the veterans with their weathered skin, their scars, their eyes full of experience. Stammel gave him a crisp nod.
    Was he really doing this, really taking a mercenary cohort to Aarenis by himself? As commander? He put his hand in his tunic, feeling Kieri’s signet ring. No more time to doubt. If he could not do it, after all those years of serving with the best commander he’d ever known, north or south, he was a fool—and Kieri would not have trusted him with the Company. He lifted the reins and nudged his horse into motion.
    As always, the villagers in Duke’s East came out to wave as the cohorts passed. Arcolin smiled at them, called out greetings to the mayor, to the innkeeper, to the village council members.
    The world had changed. The sunlight, despite a clear sky, felt thinner, muted. The trees looked different, the little river beneath the bridge; the road he had ridden so many times, so many years, looked new, untrodden, unknown.
    He scolded himself, told himself it was the same: the road, the trees, the sun, the world itself. One man could not make that much difference.
    He knew he lied.
    At the border of the Duke’s territory, the post Valichi had set up saluted them as they marched past on the road to Vérella. The marches were no longer than usual, but they seemed both longer and shorter as his mood shifted again and again.

CHAPTER THREE

 

Vérella, the palace
     
    M ikeli, crown prince of Tsaia, listened to his best friend, Juris Marrakai, joking with Mikeli’s cousin Rothlin Mahieran about the behavior of their younger brothers. Dinner this evening felt almost normal again, with his friends around him and the worst of the peril—his advisers had said—over. Fourteen days had passed since Kieri Phelan left for Lyonya, and nine since the paladin’s ordeal ended.