The hour drew on for sleep, and snores went up from every side. It was clear that all my officers were wearied out, and only continued the talk through deference to their commander. Yet I had a feverish dread of being left alone again with my thoughts, and pressed them on with conversation remorselessly. But in the end they were saved the rudeness of dropping off into unconsciousness during my talk. A sentry came up and saluted. “My lord,” he reported, “there is a woman come up from the city whom we have caught trying to come into the bivouac.”
“She will say none. She demands only to see my lord.”
“Bring her here to the fire,” I ordered, and then on second thoughts remembering that the woman, whoever she might be, had news likely enough for my private ear (or otherwise she would not have come to so uncouth a rendezvous), I said to the sentry: “Stay,” and got up from the ground beside the fire, and went with him to the outer line.
“My comrades are holding her. She might be a wench belonging to these rebels, with designs to put a knife into my lord’s heart, and then we sentries would suffer. The Empress,” he added simply, “seems to set good store upon my lord at present, and we know the cleverness of her tormentors.”
“Your thoughtfulness is frank,” I said, and then he showed me the woman. She was muffled up in hood and cloak, but one who loved Nais as I loved could not mistake the form of Ylga, her twin sister, because of mere swathings. So I told the sentries to release her without asking her for speech, and then led her out from the bivouac beyond earshot of their lines.
“It is something of the most pressing that has brought you out here, Ylga?”
“You know me, then? There must be something warmer than the ordinary between us two, Deucalion, if you could guess who walked beneath all these mufflings.”
I let that pass. “But what’s your errand, girl?”
“Aye,” she said bitterly, “there’s my reward. All your concern’s for the message, none for the carrier. Well, good my lord, you are husband to the dainty Phorenice no longer.”
“And true enough, too. She will have no more of you, divorces you, spurns you, thrusts you from her, and, after the first splutter of wrath is done, then come pains and penalties.”