Chapter 6: The Hunt

A smudge, Liora told herself, was only a smudge.

She woke the Duke with a cup of tea held under his nose.

He surfaced slowly, frowning, with his hair standing up on one side.

Then he saw the light in the window and sat bolt upright.

"What time is it?"

"Half past six."

"I slept." He sounded stunned. "Until half past six."

"You're welcome," said Liora, and kissed him on the forehead before he could say anything else.

He caught her by the wrist and kissed her properly, and it took her a minute to remember why she'd come.

"The hunt," she said, breathless. "I laid a card while you slept."

She told him what she had seen.

A forest of dark pines with snow on the branches.

A pine split down the middle by lightning, with a pale scar in the bark.

A rider in grey, the Knight of Swords on the card, crouched among the trunks with a bow.

And an arrow, from the left, flying at the Duke's chest.

"I can cancel the hunt," Bastien said.

"If you cancel it, he'll try something else, somewhere I haven't seen."

"You want me to ride into it."

"I want to ride next to you," said Liora. "I know which tree."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"You ride?"

"I ride an old pony. He's older than I am."

By seven o'clock she was on the stable's calmest mare, wearing Isaure's riding habit.

She kept her eyes fixed ahead, trying to hide her dread.

Hadrian's hunt streamed out of the castle gate in a glittering line: barons, hounds and horns, and a hundred horses blowing steam.

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