"Tell everyone that I'll be fine and will join them in a few days," said the Fiend. "That should give us a little breathing room with the chancellor."

"Isabel about fainted, you know." The foreign beauty was Deirdre's dearest friend, but the woman had not the least stomach for bloodshed.

"She'll be fine, too. Tell me more about this golden bull knight."

"Mother Ignatia says his sigil belongs to an extinct noble line from the Frisian lands."

"Remind me again of the name."

"De Silva."

"Hmm. Interesting," said the creature.

"How so?"

"Oh ... nothing. It just seems odd that a Gheet knight wearing the sigil of an extinct Frisian clan would arrive here, by mere happenstance, at the same time as a nun from the Frisian lands."

"Do you think she's a spy?"

The creature appeared to ponder her question. At last, he said, "No, I think not. It's just interesting."

She almost asked how the creature knew such things, but she bit her tongue. He had his ways, and it was idle to try and figure them out ... at least it would be at that point. He probably would just reply with something cryptic.

She instead regarded the fake knight where he reclined in his sick bed, a heavy swathe of bandages around his supposedly injured chest and arm. She knew full well that the injury was faked. Before she could say another word, the Fiend spoke again.

"How did you get this fake de Silva to the tourney grounds?"

"Easy," she said. "I relied on his Gheet pride. After I left Mother Ignatia at your tent, I found the knight idling at an ale tent near the pavilion of Chancellor Malotte."

"And then?"

"I did what any Gheet woman would do," she replied. "I flattered and shamed him into attending the tourney. What Gheet knight worth his salt would miss a chance to joust with the local squires and gentry?"

The creature chuckled, feigning a spasm of pain when he did. He really was an incomparable actor. "Was it that easy?"

"Incredibly so. I simply stood there in broad daylight shaming him—in the nicest sort of way—until he came with me to the tourney ground."

Another chuckle followed from the creature. "Did you find out anything more?"

"He isn't from the Frisian lands, at least if his accent says anything. And he presented himself as Sir Otha."

"And you say he was near to the chancellor's campsite?"

"I thought that queer. Is he working with de Margot?"

"The chancellor? It's possible. But he may merely be using this disguised knight as a spy or a go-between for some sort of backdoor negotiation."

"I thought the king kept Baron William informed on all such things."

"Perhaps," said the creature. "Perhaps not. It is something we should keep an eye on."

Something in the Fiend's words set Deirdre's mind to racing. That a knight connected to their enemy Etienne de Margot had travelled across the breadth of Albion to meet with the king's own chancellor in secret seemed to be an important matter. But the Fiend now seemed bored with the affair. That sense was only underscored with what he said next.

"Tell me more about this Mother Ignatia," he said.

"I don't know much," she replied. "She lost what little luggage she had in the storm that beached their ship and had to swim the last half furlong under her own power. She wandered for half a day before she wound up in Pepperdine. That's when she met us."

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Well ... it did seem rather strange that she came all the way to Albion looking for Sir Alexis and found him in the most unlikely place, without the least bit of searching. ... Was she lying about all that? Is she some sort of spy?"

"I think not, on both accounts. I've heard about the mother superior on the wind ... and elsewhere. It is said she is a formidable scholar and gifted teacher."

"But what of the odds?" she asked.

"Tuppence, sometimes unlikely things happen."

"You said that you sensed something on the wind. Are you certain it was this strange bull knight? Or Chancellor Malotte? Might it not have been Mother Ignatia who you sensed?"

The creature gave a solemn nod. "The wind isn't always perfect in its utterances to me. And perhaps there is something else behind this."

"Something else?"

It was another few moments before the fake knight spoke, and when he did his words were labored, as if his injuries truly vexed him. The fraud.

"Did you ever wonder how my tribe was able to fight so long and so well against the tribe of this Walking God?"

The very question had crossed her mind a time or two, but she so far had not thought to broach the subject. "You mean ... because their magic is so much more powerful?"

"Oh, Tuppence, their ability to work magic is vastly superior to ours."

"Then how?"

The old felon sat up in his improvised bed, a pained look on his face from his alleged wound. "We have this gift. It isn't a thing that's noticeable in our own realm, but on this world ... my heavens."

"What?" Now she was interested.

"There is this phenomenon, especially when we are in large numbers, that we are able to bend chance, to tweak the odds of events."

Something clicked in Deirdre when the faux knight said those words, something that had eaten at her from their first meeting. "But only when you are in great numbers?"

"No, not just then. The compounding of our numbers has an extraordinary effect on chance and probability. When we fought the enemy in great numbers, things sometimes just went our way beyond the bounds of reason."

"The Devil's own luck," she whispered.

The creature ventured a sweet smile. "Indeed."

"But when there are not great numbers of you? What about when only you are present? Do odds and probability work in the same unreasonable way?"

"It isn't so powerful when it's me alone, Tuppence. But sometimes fate and probability simply bend around me. It isn't always easy to control ... or even to predict. But it sometimes has a powerful effect."

"So, when you say you're listening to the wind, part of that is you trying to estimate this probability?"

The creature gave a faint nod.

There was something else. Deirdre didn't know what it was, but it was something that had been scratching the back of her mind since first she'd travelled through the County of Blenheim with the Fiend a year before.

Probability. She understood her math and science well enough to know about odds and chances. And it had struck her many times how easily and quickly that all the pieces had fallen into place when the Fiend had fetched her up her vengeance. It just seemed so smooth and so effortless.

There was something .... There was something ....

She found herself rising from the spot on the ground beside which she pretended to nurse the wounded Alexis de Vere. She looked down at him, her eyes wide.

"Am I your familiar?" She made no effort to modulate her tone.

"Tuppence ...," he began.

"Am I your familiar?" she asked again.

"It isn't quite like ...."

"Am I your familiar!?" Her words weren't quite a shout at that point, but they were very loud, too loud given how many people were milling about outside the small lean-to where the creature lounged.

"You are not my familiar ... but ...."

"But?" She'd learned a little about magic in the past year, but only a little. Yet she'd learned enough from her reading and from stories she'd heard as a child.

A familiar was a simple thing, an animal that witches and hexers used to heighten and to channel their power. Was that all she was? Just a tool? A dumb animal? Had the creature merely been. ...

"Tuppence, you wanted something." The creature's words were gentle, and he raised his hand from his sickbed and touched hers. "You wanted that thing more than anything else in the world. And that was the best way I had to get that bloody vengeance for you."

"I ...."

"Do you remember?"

The anger drained out of her. "I remember," she whispered.

"Deirdre, you are far more than a familiar to me. True, there is a knack within me, within all my kind, that we can channel the power of others to heighten our own strength. Some humans are more suitable than others, and you were unusually appropriate for that channeling. With your help, I was able to tickle chance and probability better than I had in many ages."

"And to get me what I wanted?"

"I told you at the time, child. What transpired at the moot on that day, and in the days leading up to it, to a large extent flowed directly from you."

"But I didn't magic anyone."

"No. But you—your anger, your hunger, your outrage—helped make it all happen."

"So, I'm not a familiar?"

"No. It's the same principle, of course. But I don't own you. And I haven't tapped into that special something inside you since that time."

"Not even once?"

"Not even once."

"And you haven't even been tempted?" she asked.

"Tuppence, you know how I am. Of course, I've been tempted."

She felt a smile grow across her face and returned to the spot where she'd been sitting. She gave the oaf's hand a gentle pat.

"So," she asked. "Chance still finds you, even without using me?"

"As I said, it isn't easy to control or to predict. But, yes, probability sometimes still bends around me, and almost always to my advantage."

"Do you think this curve in probability is what allowed Mother Ignatia to find us here?"

He gave a weary sigh. "I try not to speculate. Best just to take advantage of happenstance when you are able."

"You plan on using her in one of your schemes, don't you?"

"I may. But it certainly will be nice to have a clever and well-educated mind around. The priory she seeks to occupy is only a short ride from the manor house William gifted us. The order of Saint Akbar is famous for its schools."

"Reverend Ainsley has given up on me, has he?"

"You've outgrown that feebleminded lout. Mother Ignatia will be a fine tutor when we are at our new home."

"If we ever make it there," she said. "By the way, was this your plan to give Chancellor Malotte the slip? Feigning an injury?"

"Tuppence, Sir Alexis is properly banged up, with a deep laceration and several cracked ribs. It'll be a day or three until he can mount a horse again."

"So, we're to separate again? Is that it?"

"Yes, you ride on to Westport with Isabel and Armand. ..."

"And the Chancellor," she added.

"Exactly. Don't worry, I'll be along in a few days. First, I need to check on Sir Otha, the knight of the golden bull."

"Ah, I see." Deirdre did properly see.

After taking his injury in the lists, Sir Alexis had been forced to yield to the knight with the bull shield. Afterward, the poor fellow faced Armand in the final joust. In the first pass of lances, Armand knocked the man from his mount with such force that Deirdre had been certain the knight was dead.

No, Sir Otha was still alive and being nursed in a nearby pavilion. Little did the fellow know what awaited him when the Fiend paid him a nocturnal visit.

"Excellent," said the Fiend. "And assure Isabel she needn't stay behind to care for me. I'll arrange for a servant to see to all my needs."

"I think she'll want to stay, anyway."