“Lord Pasevalles! I thought I might find you here.”

He was tired, distracted, and worried, not at all in the mood to dally with Idela in conversation or otherwise, but he put on a smile as she made her way up the long staircase. “And find me you did, my lady,” he said as she reached him. “Your Highness is a Hound of Love, who always runs down her quarry.”

She looked around quickly to make sure they were alone, then kissed him warmly upon the lips. “Since I am a woman as well as a hound, do you call me a she-hound, Lord Chancellor? It is true enough, I suppose—I am your bitch and will do as you command.”

“Ssshh! My lady! Not so loud.” The princess had pushed up against him, and for a moment he worried she might jostle one or both of them off the landing and down the steep staircase. “Please, sweet Idela, if you wish to talk this way, let us at least go to my room, where we do not have to worry about offending the sensibilities of those who might hear us.”

“As you say, Lord Chancellor. You command me, after all. I am merely your servant—your pet.” But her hand was fumbling at his buttons in a most un-servantlike way, and it was all he could do to gently detach her fingers from his jerkin.

“Enough,” he said. “I am delighted to see you, dear princess, light of my heart. But not here. Let us go up.”

“As you wish, although there is no one to see us. Even the chambermaids come up here but seldomly.” She stepped back. “Ah, and since I am your servant, you must chastise me, dear Pasevalles.”

He was relieved to have calmed the situation. “Why?”

“Because I forgot that I had something of yours.” She lifted the hand that until now she had kept at her side. “See? You dropped this at the bottom of the stairs. I have carried it all this way for you.”

He took the folded letter from her. His fingers trembled. “You . . . found this?”

“Yes. I saw you drop it from across the front hallway.”

“But the seal is broken.” He looked from the wax to the letter written on fine Perdruinese parchment. “Did you read it?”

For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in her eyes—guilt, perhaps. “No! It must have come open when you dropped it. I would not read something private of yours, beloved!”

“You are not telling me the truth, Princess.”

Again he saw a flash of unease. “Very well. No, I did not read it, but I could not help noticing that it was from Nabban. From Lord Drusis, the duke’s brother.” She put a finger against his lips. “Ssshhh, do not scold me. I would never tell anyone, but you may tell me. Are you trying to arrange peace between him and his brother? Is it something to help the queen with her mission?” She was smiling now. “You can share with me, beloved. You know I want only to help you do what is best for the kingdom. After all, it will all be my son’s kingdom someday.”

“Yes, it will,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Wait—look there. Is that your father coming?”

Surprised, she turned to look down to the chamber below. “I do not see him—”

Pasevalles put both hands against her back and shoved hard. Idela’s arms flew up as if she were merely miming surprise. She struck first against the wall several steps below, then tumbled heels over head, rolling down the narrow, circular staircase until he could not see her anymore. He quickly made his way down the steps and found her lying some distance below, head hanging over the edge of a step, one arm bent awkwardly behind her, dress flung up, and legs splayed, precisely as if someone had dropped a child’s rag doll.

He crouched beside her. The princess dowager had bloody scrapes on her face and hands and a red bubble at the corner of her mouth, now swelling outward, now shrinking back. When he leaned close he could hear the dry gasp of her breath, slow and ragged but fairly steady.

Pasevalles shook his head and then stood. He pressed the sole of his boot down on the side of Princess Idela’s head, ignoring the way her eyes rolled beneath the half-closed lids, then twisted his foot until he heard the bones of her neck snap. He hid the letter from Nabban in the waistband of his hose, then began to call for help, shouting over and over until the stairwell echoed.

The funny thing was, the king thought, that although almost everything else that had loomed so large in his childhood—trees and walls and people—had shrunk as Simon himself grew, the Hayholt actually seemed larger to him now than it had when he was young. Perhaps because I’ve seen so much of what’s underneath. Perhaps because I have more of an idea of the secrets it holds than almost anyone else does. It was hard to feel familiarity and comfort when you knew that the large but familiar house in which you’d grown was built over an entire separate castle, and a Sithi castle at that, unexplored for centuries and haunted by dangerous secrets.

“Aren’t you going to tell us the rules, Grandfather?” demanded Lillia. “Or are you just going to stare at the ground?”

He looked up, a little startled to find himself woolgathering. “Here, now. Don’t be sharp with the king, young lady, or I’ll have you in the dungeon before you know it.”

Lillia and her friends duly pretended to be frightened, which made him smile. His granddaughter had rounded up several playmates, a pair of Rowson girls and two boys close to Lillia’s own age, young relations of Earl Osrics, both in the age between childhood and the serious business of manhood, impatient to be grown. He prayed they could retain their romantic beliefs about manhood for many years to come, that he would not be forced to send them to war.

“Well?”

“Sorry, Princess Lillia the Stern,” he said. “I was thinking about how I will marry you off someday to a fat and bossy prince who will eat all the sweets and leave you none.”

“No, you won’t. Now tell us the rules. Why is this game called ‘Holly King’?”

“Because that was the name of a Hernystiri king who long ago ruled here—ruled most of the north. And he was not an Aedonite, but a pagan!”

“Then why did God let him rule in the Hayholt?”

“Oh, eventually he lost. He’s not the king now, is he? And we’re not Hernystiri, are we? Now, enough questions, child. This is a hiding game, and we pretend we are Aedonite priests.”

“We already know how to play hide and seek, Grandfather.”

“Ah, but this is different. Priests do not betray each other.” And he explained how only one person was to hide at first, while everybody else would look, and if a player found the person who was hiding they had to climb into the hiding place with them. “Then, you see, the last person becomes the Holly King, and then he—yes, Lillia, or she—becomes the first to hide in the next game. Do you understand?”

“But if the last person is the Holly King, why would he be the person who hides? I thought you said the Holly King was trying to catch the priests.”

Simon sighed. “In truth, it is sometimes difficult trying to do things with you, Granddaughter.”

•   •   •

One of Osric’s young relations was the first to hide, and Simon, who knew the castle far better than any of the children, soon found him in the back of one of the residence’s ground-floor storerooms. He whispered to the boy to keep quiet, then sat down beside him to wait for the rest to discover their hiding place. Soon, the darkness and the warmth of close quarters made the king’s eyes begin to feel heavy.

It makes no sense, he thought. When I dreamed, I would sometimes wake up many times in a night, my heart pounding like a war drum, and then I’d find it hard to get back to sleep. Some days I walked around in a fog all day from the sleep I’d missed. But now, when for some reason my dreams have deserted me, I still feel the same way, weary and stupid. Bloody Tree, it really isn’t fair!