"Now you've wakened him," warned the one, and he was Prince Verity, the man from the warmly lit chamber of my first evening.

"So? He'll go back to sleep as soon as we leave. Damn him, he has his father's eyes as well. I swear, I'd have known his blood no matter where I saw him. There'll be no denying it to any that see him. But have neither you nor Burrich the sense of a flea? Bastard or not, you don't stable a child among beasts. Was there nowhere else you could put him?"

The man who spoke was like Verity around the jaw and eyes, but there the resemblance ended. This man was younger by far. His cheeks were beardless, and his scented and smoothed hair was finer and brown. His cheeks and forehead had been stung to redness by the night's chill, but it was a new thing, not Verity's weathered ruddiness. And Verity dressed as his men dressed, in practical woolens of sturdy weave and subdued colors. Only the crest on his breast showed brighter, in gold and silver thread. But the younger man with him gleamed in scarlets and primrose, and his cloak drooped with twice the width of cloth needed to cover a man. The doublet that showed beneath it was a rich cream, and laden with lace. The scarf at his throat was secured with a leaping stag done in gold, its single eye a winking green gem. And the careful turn of his words was like a twisted chain of gold compared to the simple links of Verity's speech.

"Regal, I had given it no thought. What do I know of children? I turned him over to Burrich. He is Chivalry's man, and as such he's cared for ... ."

"I meant no disrespect to the blood, sir," Burrich said in honest confusion. "I am Chivalry's man, and I saw to the boy as I thought best.