"He is a kind man, Father. Babba. He has always been polite to me, proper in his speech, and always insists that his guards stay-and my maid as well. He says I remind him of his daughter."

Her father gave a little snort of disbelief. "Many young women remind him of his daughter, it seems."

"Father! Be kind. You know his daughter has disappeared and both his sons are dead."

The count shook his head, but she could see him softening. More sub¬tle than her sister, she had learned ways to bend him gently to her will, and sometimes he even seemed to collaborate in his own defeats. "Do not badger me," he said. "I will grant him the respect of some privacy-he is a king, after all-but I do not like it. And if anything untoward occurs…"

"It won't, Father. He's not like that." Pelaya Akuanis was far too ladylike to curse even to herself, and did not know any really useful curse words in any case, but Olin's favor was costing her more than the prisoner could know. She could not besiege her father for favors like this very often: it would be long months before she could expect to get her way in anything important again. / hope it's worth it for him, talking to some laundry trollop. But she knew even in her disgruntled state that wasn't quite fair: there was un¬questionably something more to this girl, this Nira, although Pelaya still could not guess what it might be.

Olin and his guards arrived even as a quiet rumble of thunder growled through the northern sky. A storm was on the way. Pelaya's father stepped forward and bowed his head to the prisoner.

"King Olin, you are a persuasive man, or else we would not all be standing in this garden with the rains sweeping toward us and my supper waiting. My daughter has risked her father's love to bring you and this young woman here."

Olin smiled. "I think that might be an exaggeration, Count Perivos, from the things your daughter has said about you. I have a headstrong girl child myself, so I appreciate your position and I thank you for indulging me when you did not need to." He lowered his voice so the bodyguard stand¬ing a dozen steps away could not hear. "Did you receive the letter? And is it any help to you?"

Pelaya's father would not be so easily swayed. "Perhaps. We will talk about it at some other time. For now I will leave you to your conversa¬tion… if you will swear to me on your honor that it is nothing against the interests of Hierosol. It goes without saying that it is nothing lewd or im¬moral, either."

"Yes, it goes without saying," said Olin with a touch of asperity. "You have my word, Count Perivos."

Her father bowed and withdrew himself a little way.

"Do not be frightened, child," Olin said to the laundry girl. "Your name is Nira, I am told. Is that correct?"

She nodded, watching the bearded man with a different kind of atten¬tion than she had given to the garden or Pelaya or anything else, almost as if she recognized him-as if they had met before and the girl was trying to remember where and when. For a moment Pelaya felt a kind of chill. Had she done something truly wrong here after all? Was she unwittingly help¬ing an escape plan, something that would cost her father his honor or maybe even his life?

"Yes," the girl said slowly. "Nira."

"All I want to know from you is a little about your family," Olin said gen¬tly. "That red in your hair-I think it is rare in this part of the world, is it not?"

The girl only shrugged. Pelaya felt a need to say something, if only to remind the man that she was still sitting here, part of the gathering. "Not so rare," she told him. "There have been northerners in Xand for years- mercenaries and folk of that sort. My father often talks about the autarch's White Hounds. They are famous traitors to Eion."

Olin nodded. "But still, I think such a shade is uncommon." He smiled and turned to the laundry girl. "Are there mercenaries from Eion in your family, young Nira? Northerners with fair hair?"

The girl hesitated for a moment as she made sense of his question. Her fingers moved up to the place where another little curl of hair escaped her scarf and pushed it back beneath the stained homespun cloth. "No. All… like me."

"I see something in you of a family that I know well, Nira. Be brave- you have done nothing wrong. Can you tell me if your family came from the north? Are there any family stories about such things?"

She looked at him a long time, as though trying to decide whether this entire conversation might be some kind of trick. "No. Always Xis." She shrugged. "Think always Xis. Until me."

"Until you, of course." He nodded. "Someone told me that your p.arents. died. I am very sorry to hear it. If I can do anything not thai I have much favor here, but I have made a couple of kind friends-let me know."

She stared at him again, clearly puzzled by something. At last: she nodded.

"Let her go now," Olin said, straightening. "I am sure she hasn't had her supper yet and I have no doubt she works hard all the day." He stood. "Thank you, Pelaya, and thank you, Count Perivos. My curiosity is satis¬fied. Doubtless it was just a fluke of light and shadow that tricked me into seeing a resemblance that was not there-that could not be there."

Pelaya's little maid took Nira back to the servants' dormitory, and Olin went with his guards back to his chambers. As she walked back across the garden toward their residence, a part of the citadel only a little less sump¬tuous than the lord protector's own quarters, Pelaya took her father's hand.

"Thank you, Babba," she said. "You are the best, kindest father. You truly are.

"But what in the name of the gods was that all about?" he said, scowl¬ing. "Has the man lost his wits? What connection could he be searching for with a laundry girl?"

"I don't know," Pelaya said. "But they both seem sad."

Her father shook his head. "That is what you said about that stray cat, and now I awake every morning to the sound of that creature yowling for fish. Both your King Olin and his laundry girl have places to live. Do not think to bring them home."

"No, Papa." But she too wondered what had brought two such strange, different people together in a Hierosol garden.

The sky thundered again and the first drops of rain began to spatter down. Pelaya, her father, and the bodyguard all hurried to get out of the open air.

.

Voices in the Forest

But each night Pale Daughter heard Silvergleam singing and her heart

ached for him, until at last she fled her father's house and ran to her

beloved. So beautiful was she that he could not bear to send her away,

although his brother and sister warned him that only evil would come of it.

But Silvergleam made Pale Daughter his wife, and together they conceived

a child who would make a new and greater song of their two melodies, a

strange song which would thereafter sound through all the Tale of Years.

— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret

EVEN WITH HER INJURIES, Briony knew she should put as much distance as she could between herself and Landers Port, but instead she stayed close to the walls of the city in the two days after the attack, sheltering where she could and eavesdropping on the conversa¬tions of other travelers, trying to find out for certain what had happened to Shaso. The destructive fire that had taken the life of one of the city's wealthiest merchants was on everyone's lips, of course, and all seemed to agree that except for the one lone manservant she'd seen, only the women of Dan-Mozan's house had survived the night's terrible events.

Her last unlikely hopes finally dashed, Briony realized that if the baron's guards knew that more than one fugitive had taken refuge in the Dan-Mozan hadar, they would be looking for her. Young man's clothing was an indifferent disguise, especially when it was a young Tuani man's clothing