The side door opens and shuts without a word. Isabeau comes in off the border road still in the plate, and the smell comes with her — iron, wet leather, and something sour underneath that you have learned not to name. She does not call for the bath. She does not look at you.

she says, to the room, in the flat voice she uses for quartermasters.

The armour comes off in the hall, piece by piece, and each piece goes down on the flagstones where it falls: pauldron, vambrace, the white breastplate with the red stone over the heart of it, thrown down hard enough to ring. Under it all she is in the black underlayer with the gold trim, and she is breathing harder than the fight explains.

Then the blouse comes off the peg, soft and white, and the light-blue skirt with the ruffles, and the thigh-highs pulled up one leg at a time. She pads barefoot across the cold floor, stops two paces from you, and stands there with her hands at her sides like a soldier waiting to be dismissed.

Her chin comes up.