"by all means keep that fire stoked and your blade sharp. Your day will come in due time."

"Sir," Ulresile said, looking back at the table.

"Now," the King began, then became aware of some sort of commotion at the gates to the palace.

"Majesty…" Wiester said, frowning in the same direction and drawing himself up on tip-toes to see better.

"Wiester, what can you see?" the King asked.

"A servant, sir. Hurrying. Indeed, running."

At this point, both the Doctor and I looked round, under the table. And indeed, there was a plump youth in the uniform of the palace footmen, running up the path.

"I thought they were not allowed to run for fear of scattering the stones over the flower beds," the King said, shading his eyes against the sunlight's new slant.

"Indeed so, sir," Wiester said, and assumed his most stern and censorious expression as he stepped to the end of the table and walked purposefully down to meet the lad, who stopped before him and bent over to lean his hands on his knees while he panted, "Sir!"

"What, boy?" Wiester bellowed.

"Sir, there's been a murder, sir!"

"A murder?" Wiester said, taking a step back and seeming to shrink in on himself. The Guard Commander Adlain was on his feet instantly.

"What's this?" Quettil asked.

"What did he say?" Walen said.

"Where?" Adlain demanded from the youth.

"Sir, in the questioning chamber of Master Nolieti, sir."

Duke Quettil gave a small, high laugh. "Why, is that unusual?"

"Who is murdered, boy?" Adlain said, walking down the path towards the servant.

"Sir, Master Nolieti, sir."

"Once upon a time there was a land called Lavishia, and two

cousins lived there, called Sechroom and Hiliti."

"I think you have already told this story, DeWar," Lattens said in a small, croaky voice.

"I know, but there is more to it. Some people's lives have more than one story. This is a different one."

"Oh."

"How are you feeling? Are you well enough to hear one of my stories? I know they are not very good."

"I am well enough, Mr DeWar."

DeWar plumped the boy's cushions up and got him to drink a little water. He was in a small but luxurious room off the private apartments, near the harem so that concubines like Perrund and Huesse could come and sit with him, but close to his father's quarters and that of Doctor BreDelle, who had pronounced the boy prone to nervous exhaustion and pressure of blood on the brain, and was bleeding him twice a day. There had been no return of the fits the boy had suffered that first day, but he was recovering his strength only very slowly.

DeWar came to see the boy when he could, which was usually when Lattens" father was visiting the harem, as now.

"Well, if you are sure."

"I am. Please tell your story."

"Very well. One day the two friends were playing a game."

"What sort of a game?"

"A very complicated one. Fortunately we don't need to concern ourselves with the details of how the game is played. All that matters is that they were playing it and they came to disagree about the rules, because there were more than one set of rules regarding how the game should be played."

"That is strange."

"Yes, but it was just that sort of game. So they disagreed. What it boiled down to was that Sechroom said that — as in life in general — you should always do what seemed like the right thing to do at the time, while Hiliti said that sometimes you had to do what appeared to be the wrong thing at the time in order to do the right thing eventually. Do you see?"

"I'm not sure."

"Hmm. Let me see. I know. That little pet eltar of yours. What's it called?"

"What, Wintle?"

"Yes, Wintle. Remember when you brought it inside and it peed in a corner?"

"Yes," Lattens said.

"And we had to take it and rub its nose in its own mess so that it wouldn't do it again?"

"Yes."

"Well, that wasn't very nice for poor little Wintle, now was it?"

No.

"Can you imagine if somebody did that to you when you were young, if you'd done a pee in the corner?"

"Eurgh!"

"But it was the right thing to do, because eventually Wintle will stop doing that when he's brought inside, and so he can be brought in and enjoy himself with us instead of having to stay in the cage in the garden all the time."

"Yes?"

"And that is the sort of thing that people mean when they talk about being cruel to be kind. Have you heard that phrase before?"

"Yes. My teacher says it often."

"Yes, I think it is a phrase adults say to children quite often. But that was what Sechroom and Hiliti disagreed about. Sechroom said that you should never be cruel to be kind. Sechroom thought there must always be another way of teaching people lessons, and that good people had a duty to try and find those ways, and then to use them. Hiliti thought this was silly, and that throughout history it had been proved that sometimes you did have to be cruel to be kind, whether what you were trying to teach was a little pet eltar or a whole people."

"A whole people?"

"You know. Like an Empire or a country. Like Tassasen. Everybody."

"Oh."

"So, one day after they had fallen out over this game, Hiliti decided that he would teach Sechroom a lesson. He and Sechroom had grown up playing tricks and pranks on each other and each had come to expect such behaviour from the other. This day, a short time after their disagreement over the game, Hiliti and Sechroom and two other friends rode on their great mounts to one of their favourite places, a-"

"Was this before or after the other story, when the lady Leeril gave Hiliti sweets?"

"This was afterwards. The four of them came to this place in the hills where there was a clearing and a tall waterfall and lots of fruit trees all around and lots of rocks-"

"Were any of the rocks sugar rocks?".

"Lots of them. In many different flavours, though Sechroom and Hiliti and their two friends had brought their own picnic. So they ate the picnic and they swam in the pool at the foot of the waterfall and they played some games of hide-and-seek and so on and then Hiliti said he had a special game he wanted to show Sechroom.

Hiliti asked the other two friends to remain where they were by the side of the pool, while Hiliti and Sechroom climbed up the rocks until they were at the top of the waterfall, standing right beside where the waters fell over the edge.

"Now, Sechroom didn't know, but Hiliti had ridden up there the day before and hidden a wooden plank by the side of the waterfall.

"Hiliti brought this plank out of the bushes and said that Sechroom had to stand on the end of the plank, with the other end sticking out over the drop. Then Hiliti would walk out on to the plank, towards the end, but — and this was where Sechroom started to get a little frightened — Hiliti would put on a blindfold first, so that he couldn't see what he was doing. Sechroom would have to guide him, and the thing was to see how close to the end of the plank Sechroom would let him get. How much did they really trust each other? That was the question.

"Then, assuming that Hiliti didn't fall off the plank and tumble to his death on the rocks below, or, if he was lucky, miss the rocks but land in the pool, it would be Sechroom's turn, and she would have to do the same thing, with Hiliti standing on the end of the plank and telling Sechroom to go forward or stop. Sechroom wasn't very sure about any of this, but eventually agreed because she didn't want to seem lacking in trust. Anyway, Hiliti put the blindfold on, told Sechroom to adjust the length of the plank hanging over the drop until she was happy with it, then he stepped on to the plank and went shuffling and wobbling along towards the end, with his hands and arms out-stretched. Like this."