“One more reason to win,” Guildenstern said, and caught her to him again.

If Count Thraxton had ever been happy in all his born days, his face didn’t know it. He was tall and thin and lean, beard and mustache and eyebrows going gray. His features might have come from one of the masks tragic actors wore so even people in the highest rows of the amphitheater could see what they were supposed to be feeling. His eyes were large and dark and gloomy, the eyes of a sorrowing hound. Harsh lines of grief scored his cheeks. His thin-lipped mouth perpetually turned down at the corners.

He’d looked mournful at his wedding, to one of the loveliest and wealthiest women in all of Detina. He’d looked mournful after their wedding night (wags said she had, too, but never where he could hear them: along with his skill at magecraft, he was uncommonly good with a sword). Now, with real disaster looming up from the south and east, he looked no worse-but no better, either.

A servant-a serf, of course-came up behind Thraxton, his footsteps obsequiously soft. “Supper is ready, your Grace,” he murmured. “The others have already taken their places.”

They hadn’t presumed to start eating without Thraxton. He wondered how long even that minimal courtesy would last. Not long, unless he started winning victories against the rabble of merchants and peasants who fought for scapegrace Avram and not Geoffrey-a man who, by the gods, knew how to be king. But Thraxton saw no victories around Rising Rock-only the choice between losing another battle and abandoning northwestern Franklin without a fight.

His stomach knotted. How was he supposed to eat, faced with such a dismal choice? But not appearing would only affront the generals who served under him. He nodded to the hovering serf: a sharp, brusque motion. “I’m coming,” he said.