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attending on the King. He has carved out a place for himself, and anyway, we quarrel if we are in the same place over-long, he and I.”
    I will own, I was relieved to hear it. ’Twas Marmion Shahrizai who betrayed Melisande, many years ago, giving her over to Quincel de Morhban, sovereign Duc of Kusheth, who brought her in tow to Troyes-le-Monte. He paid for it in the end, for his ally, his sister Persia, had proved duplicitous, and Marmion had inadvertently-so he claimed-caused her death, his men-at-arms accidentally setting the fire that took her life. Whether or not it was true, I cannot say; of a surety, he was banished for it. I daresay House Shahrizai would have had his head, had not Nicola offered him sanctuary in Aragonia.
    It was well-done, for whatever the truth of Marmion’s crime, he had indeed been loyal to the Queen. Still, I was glad not to have to face him.
    It was enough to have one Shahrizai in my life again.

Twenty-One
    IN AN hour’s time, I told the story all over again to the King’s Consul, Nicola’s husband.
    Ramiro Zornín de Aragon was a minor lordling of the House of Aragon, and a drunkard in the bargain. For all of that, I rather liked the man. He was good-natured and harmless, and capable of flashes of passion when prodded to it. The rumor of Carthaginian slave-traders in Amílcar did just that.
    I have no doubt Nicola would have urged him had it been necessary, but Lord Ramiro needed no prompting. Whether he liked a life of ease or no, he knew full well where his country’s alliances lay, and knew too that his wife was cousin to the Queen of Terre d’Ange and his sons-two boys whom I never met-were half-D’Angeline themselves. By the time I’d finished the tale, he was already shouting for Count Fernan and the Captain of the Harbor Watch to be summoned.
    It was rare, I gathered, for Ramiro to exercise the full authority of his role as King’s Consul. He did it now, his narrow cheeks flushed with emotion, brown spaniel’s eyes alight. Nicola watched him with affectionate pride; it had surprised me, when I first met him, that there was genuine fondness between them. In Terre d’Ange, she had spoken only of his shortcomings, but the bond went deeper than I had reckoned. Nicola was D’Angeline, after all, and no matter what the politics involved, none of Elua’s children were likely to linger overlong in a loveless union.
    And love takes many forms.
    We had a hasty meal before the Count and his Captain of the Watch arrived, and then Fernan was there, black-bearded and broad-shouldered, slow to ire, but clearly unhappy at being summoned thusly by a man he regarded as the King’s tame Consul. I saw him rethink the wisdom of it upon being introduced to me, and twice-over to meet Joscelin and Luc, the sons of Verreuil. Joscelin’s cool Cassiline bow, crossed vambraces flashing, would have given pause to any man of sense, and Luc ... bless his Siovalese heart, was an earnest specimen of all that is good and true in the old lines of D’Angeline country nobledom, with his wide-set blue eyes and his father’s courtesies on his lips in hard-learned Aragonian.
    In time, between us, we roused the Count to full-blown anger. It took some doing, for he was a large man and stolid with it, secure in his holdings and misliking this sudden insistence on the part of the King’s Consul. But he was a proud man, too, and the implications of our news cut him to the quick.
    “Carthaginians,” Count Fernan rumbled, switching to Caerdicci, a tongue we all held in common. “What do you say, Captain Vitor? Do we harbor Carthaginian slavers in Amílcar?”
    Vitor Gaitán, Captain of the Harbor Watch, shrugged his shoulders. He was a lean man, with cheeks pitted by a childhood pox. “The lady’s Tsingani may say so, but Tsingani lie. Give me your leave, my lord Count, and I will tell you ere daybreak.”
    “My leave.” Count Fernan pounded one massive fist on the table. “My leave! By Mithra, you have my leave to turn Amílcar upside down!”
    So it was done.
    We rode out, that night, to see it done. Nicola, reckoning it folly to observe the rude proceedings, would have no part in it-and I did not blame her. It was an unpleasant business. Still, I had set it in motion, and I felt I should bear witness to it. Let us see, I thought grimly, how much bitter truth there is in the words of the lady’s Tsingani; mayhap the Aragonians will not be so quick to condemn Hyacinthe’s folk one day. We