“Driver?” the duchess called. “Driver?”

The crush was so great now that the carriage swayed continuously. Jesa caught a glimpse of a face she had not seen before, a strange-looking, disheveled man with an even stranger smile, who seemed content to stand a short distance back from the carriage peering in at them.

One of the petty-knights appeared at the window. “Your Grace, someone has pulled the driver off the carriage! You are in danger if you remain here. Come with me onto my horse. We will have to cut our way out!”

But before the duchess could reply, the knight suddenly toppled from his saddle and was swallowed up by the sea of people. His horse high-stepped away into the crowd, knocking people down while making a squealing noise that Jesa had never heard an animal make before. Together with the shrieks of those the beast trod upon, the din grew so piercingly loud that Jesa thought she was losing her mind.

“Duchess,” she cried, “we have to run! We must get out and run!” The dark-haired man with the odd grin was back near the carriage window again, staring as though he watched an enjoyable performance, even as others rocked the vehicle from side to side. There was something strange about the man’s face besides the fixed smile, something rough and odd and unusual about his skin. Jesa could also see more than a few red Albatross badges scattered through the crowd, and nary a Kingfisher. “It’s a trap!” she cried. “They’ll murder us!”

“Nonsense,” said Canthia, but her eyes said she did not entirely believe what she was saying. “My husband’s crest is on the carriage! They will never dare to harm their duchess or their duke’s child!”

Now the vehicle swayed even more violently, so that Jesa slid from her seat and into the duchess. It was only luck that little Serasina was not crushed between them.

“Get out, get out!” Jesa shouted, but she could barely hear herself above the shouts from the surrounding crowd. She reached for the door beside the duchess but the press of people outside was too thick and the door would not open. Suddenly the whole carriage tipped sideways. Jesa turned to her own side and saw the man with the odd smile again, but now he was climbing in through the window.

“She is calling me,” the man said. His grin was fixed like a stone carving, and he spoke as calmly as if he continued a conversation he and Jesa had begun earlier. He first worked his shoulders through the carriage window, then his arms. Duchess Canthia had fallen forward as the carriage tipped, and could not get up from where she was wedged between the seat and the floor. The intruder reached toward the baby in Jesa’s arms, and she saw that he had a sharpened wooden stake in one hand. “I am summoned by the Whisperer—I must go to her,” the smiling man said, so offhandedly he might have been talking to himself. “But it is such a long way! So I will bring her a gift—something warm . . .”

Jesa managed to get her foot up and kick the intruder full in the face, but he only fell back a short way, and managed to gouge her leg with his stake, drawing blood, before she could pull it back. He began to climb again until he had forced his entire upper body into the carriage. Jesa gave the baby to Duchess Canthia and did her best to shield the tiny body with her own, kicking and hitting out at the intruder, but this time he blocked the blows with his free arm and continued to clamber in, still grinning.

The last thing I will ever see . . . that terrible face . . . Jesa thought, then suddenly the man’s demented grin contracted in puzzlement; a moment later he was jerked backward out of the carriage. Jesa did not see what happened, but heard a whistling cry that began as rage and ended as nothing. A lacy spray of blood splashed the carriage window frame.

The noise outside abruptly changed. The cacophony of voices grew louder and more shrill, but now Jesa also heard the thunder of shod hooves on cobblestone, then screams and other dreadful noises that, if less human, might have come from a butcher’s yard. The carriage stopped swaying.

Another face appeared in the window. To Jesa’s surprise, the newcomer’s skin was as dark as her own, but he wore shiny armor. He had taken off his helmet, and his broad, handsome face was full of worry.

“Your Grace, do you live?” he asked, trying to sort out who was who in the muddle into which Jesa, the duchess, and the baby had fallen.

“Yes, I live,” the duchess said from beneath Jesa. “And thanks to our beloved Ransomer, the Aedon, my baby also lives. Who are you?”

“Viscount Matreu of Spenit, Your Grace. We have met before, but it was long ago. Thanks be to God that my men and I were riding this way! We have put the rabble to flight. Are you injured?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Canthia said. “Will you get off me now, Jesa, so I can speak to our rescuer? Thank you.” The duchess worriedly examined little Serasina, but the baby seemed to be no worse than startled by the events. “What do we do now? Can we drive on?”

“I fear your driver is dead, and so are several of your guards,” said Matreu. “And both of the wide roads out of this square are blocked. We will have to take you and your child and your servant onto our horses.”

Jesa thought she had never seen a man so admirable, in part because she felt sure that without his intervention, she and her mistress and innocent little Serasina would all be dead. In that moment, if someone had told her the dark-skinned count was one of the Aedonite God’s angels, she would have seriously considered turning her back on He Who Always Steps On Sand to embrace a new faith. But her joy and wonder were short-lived: as she was helped out of the carriage and saw the way it had been defaced and damaged, and then caught sight of all the bodies lying on the ground, she swooned and stumbled and would have fallen had not one of Count Matreu’s soldiers leaned down from his saddle and caught her arm.

Jesa felt as though she dreamed: things that had happened and things that were happening were now swirled together, with little to tell them apart. She would remember little of the ride to the Sancellan Mahistrevis except the smoke in the air and the puzzled, sometimes hostile looks of the citizens they passed. As they made their slow way up the hill Duchess Canthia rode in front of the count, carrying her baby, while Jesa clung to the back of one of the other knights. She had never been on a horse before, and the experience was only slightly less frightening than what had happened in the carriage.

The one thing she definitely saw, and would wish ever afterward that she hadn’t, was beside the carriage when she first stepped down. The smiling man’s head was no longer attached to his body. Both parts of him lay on the cobbles just a short distance away, each surrounded by a pool of shiny blood, and the severed head still wore the same strange grin.

•   •   •

“It is an outrage!” said Duke Saluceris. “God preserve us, they tried to murder my wife and child! I will have my brother’s head for this—and Dallo the Ingadarine’s as well!”

“We should move on him now, before he can leave the city.” This was Idexes Claves, Lord Chancellor and one of the duke’s closest allies.

“But what of your brother?” demanded Rillian Albias, the Solicitor General. Like the other nobles crowded into the parlor, the leader of the Albian house was armed for war. “We cannot take up Dallo and leave Drusis loose. The Stormbirds all but count your brother as their leader already—they know who holds the power.”

The Duchess, who had been stroking Serasina’s face as she fell asleep in her basket, now stood. “Stay with her,” she told Jesa before going to join the men. She left the door open, doubtless to listen in case little Serasina should cry, but it allowed Jesa to hear and see what was going on. She was still fascinated by the viscount. Since she had come to Nabban she had seen almost no one who looked like herself who was not a servant or something lower.