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And my own
trimoira
dagger came up from the stable floor in his free left hand, missing my neck, gouging the flesh over my collarbone. There was that much fight in him still; and more yet, as we wrestled for the dagger. Even then, truly, I was not trying to kill him, but only to hold him off while keeping the
trimoira
out of his reach. But my left hand was on the sword against his throat, and I felt something go, collapsing under the increased pressure. He coughed, and his eyes widened, and he looked for a moment as puzzled as a child. Then he shivered once, just the one long shiver, and died beneath me. It was that fast, and that quiet.

There were spades in the stable. I carried him outside and buried him and his ancient sword under a wild
bilibro
bush, which bears great purple flowers in the spring. The blood from my gashed shoulder fell on the petals. When I was done, I said aloud, “You were not always a doorkeeper, Brother. Sunlight on your road.”

When I turned toward the stable again, I saw the monks. Four or five of them, all faces I recognized from the firelit circle around Master Caldrea and the Tree. “I have done what I came to do,” I said. “I wish no harm to any of you. Let me pass.”

None of them moved, neither to permit nor to hinder me.

I took a pace toward them, a very weary hand on the hilt of the
trimoira
dagger, seriously doubting whether I had strength enough remaining to pull it from my belt. But the oldest monk—Brother Thymanos by name, a tall man with thin blue lips—stepped forward to say, “We have come to offer you all that your passage has left us.” I stared at him. Thymanos continued, “Caldrea is dead. The Hunters are ended with the Tree. If this house is to survive, it must do so, not only under a new Master, but under a new
sort
of Master.” He dropped to his knees beside me, then took my hand from the dagger-hilt and placed it on top of his bald head.

“No,” I said. “No. Oh, no.” But I said it in a slow whisper, because there was a strange dark justice in such a proposal, and genuine temptation as well. If I have never been much more in my life than a wandering mercenary of one sort or another, it has not been entirely out of laziness or uninterest. But most other possibilities had never endured beyond a drink and a daydream. Not once had I ever had to face the truth of what Master Caldrea had said of me: that I fled power because I desired it so much, because I feared my own ambition. I faced it now, in the eyes of the monks who had offered me their leadership—a mighty matter once again, with the Tree no longer draining the secret strength of
that place—
and also in my imagining of Lal’s raised eyebrow and the fox’s short, cold laugh if I should ever tell them of this moment. I said “No,” once more, no louder, but differently, and walked past them to fetch my mare out of the stable.

No one moved or spoke until I had mounted and turned the mare’s head toward the road. Then a younger monk, a shy man named Joshuo, “It could be different here. We could be different.”

“No,” I said, “you never could. But that is not my business, not at all. My business is to tell you that if anyone—
anyone—
from this place comes after me again, I will not only kill him, but I will return one last time and destroy this entire house, as I destroyed the Hunters’ Tree. You know I can now.”

And I rode away without a backward glance.

Somehow I managed to stay upright as far as the outskirts of a hamlet whose name I no longer recall, whereupon I toppled off my mare into an abandoned hayfield and slept for the remainder of the day, and most of the night. When I woke the stars were shockingly bright, I no longer seemed to be bleeding anywhere, and I was hardly limping at all. So I rode on, randomly heading due north, and why not? Northward lay the little kings, the smaller dukes, and the clan warlords, and one or another of them was bound to require a bodyguard, a caravan guide or a settler of their petty grudges, and all of these were things I knew how to do. For now and some little while to come, all directions, all pathways, all employments were going to feel very much the same.

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