"No more!" he moaned. "I give in! He's too good for me! Providence defends the Protector and all his generals! I am an unworthy wretch ever to have set myself against them! Take pity on me and let me surrender like the abject cur that I am!"

"I win!" Lattens said, and with a grin at his nurse he twirled on the platform and let himself fall backwards into the woman's arms. She grunted with the impact, but caught the boy and held him.

"Here, lad! Here!" His father stood and went to the front of the platform, holding out his arms. "Bring that brave young warrior to me!"

The nurse duly delivered Lattens into his father's embrace while the others gathered round, applauding and laughing and clapping backs and offering congratulations.

"A fine campaign, young man!"

"Quite splendid!"

"Providence in your pocket!"

"Well, well done!"

"— and then we could play the game at night, Father, when it's a dark night and make flame-balls and light them and set the cities on fire! Couldn't we?"

DeWar stood and brushed himself down. Perrund looked at him over her veil and he grinned and even blushed a little.

"Well?" the King asked.

The Doctor leaned closer and peered at the wound. Duke Walen's body lay on a long table in the withdrawing room where he had been murdered. The small feast that had occupied the table when we had brought the body in had been set on the floor to one side. The table cloth had been wrapped over the Duke's body so that his legs and belly and his head had been covered, leaving only his chest exposed. He had been pronounced dead by the Doctor, though not until after she had done the most extraordinary thing.

The Doctor had seemed to kiss the old man while he lay bleeding and shaking on the balcony. She had knelt by his side and blown her own breath into him, puffing out first her cheeks and then his, so that his chest rose and fell. She was at the same time attempting to staunch the flow of blood that had issued from the wound in his chest, using a piece of material torn from her own dress. This then became my duty, using a clean kerchief while she concentrated on blowing into Duke Walen's mouth.

After a while, when she had been unable to feel any pulse for some long time, she had shaken her head and sat back, exhausted, on the floor.

A ring of servants, all with swords or long knives, had been established round the scene. When the Doctor and I looked up it was to see Duke Quettil, the two Guard Commanders, Adlain and Polchiek, and the King looking down at us. Behind us, in the darkened room, a girl was weeping quietly.

"Bring him inside. Light all the candles," Duke Quettil told the armed servants. He looked at the King, who nodded.

"Well, Doctor?" the King said again.

"A dagger wound, I think," the Doctor said. "A very thin, sharp blade. Steeply angled. It must have penetrated the heart. Much of the bleeding was internal, which is why it's still seeping out. If I'm to be sure of all this, I will need to open the corpse."

"I think we know the main thing, which is that he is dead," Adlain said. From beyond a line of servants by the windows, a woman's screams could be heard. I imagined it was the Duke's wife.

"Who was in the room?" Quettil asked his Guard Commander.

"These two," Polchiek said, nodding at a young man and woman, both hardly any older than myself, both quite handsome and with their dress in some disarray. Each was held from behind by two of the armed servants. It was only now starting to occur to me that there had been a particular explanation for the great numbers of servants at the ball, and for the fact that many of them looked somewhat coarser than one expected of servants. They were really guards. That was why they had all suddenly produced weapons at the first hint of mischief.

The young woman's face was red and swollen with crying, and held a look of blank terror. A wail from beyond the windows drew her attention and she stared in that direction. The face of the young man at her side looked almost as bloodless as the body of Duke Walen.

"And who are you?" Adlain asked the young couple.

"Uo-Uo-Uoljeval, sir," the young man said, swallowing heavily. "A squire in the em-employ of Duke Walen, sir."

Adlain looked at the young woman, who was staring straight ahead. "And you, madam?"

The young woman shivered and looked not at Adlain but at the Doctor. Still she did not say anything.

Eventually the young man said, "Droythir, sir. Her name is Droythir. Of Mizui. A chambermaid to Lady Gilseon. My betrothed."

"Sir, can't we let the Duchess in now?" the Doctor asked the King. He shook his head and held up one hand.

Guard Commander Adlain jerked his head back as though pointing at the girl with his chin and demanded, "And what were you doing in here, madam?"

The young woman stared at him as though he'd spoken in some utterly unknown language. It crossed my mind that she was indeed a foreigner. Then the young man started to weep and said, "It was only for his pleasure, sirs, please!"

Through his tears he looked in turn at each of the faces watching him. "Sirs, he said he liked such sport, and would reward us. We knew nothing, nothing until we heard him cry out. He was there. There, behind there, watching us from behind the screen there. He knocked it over when he — when he-" The young man looked round as best he could at a screen lying on the floor near one corner of the room, by a door, and started to breathe very quickly.

"Calm down," Adlain snapped. The young man closed his eyes and slumped in the grip of the two guards. They looked at each other, then at Adlain and Polchiek, who was also, I thought, distinctly pale and haggard.

"And there, was a dark bird," the young woman said suddenly, in a strange, hollow voice. Her eyes stared straight ahead out of her pale, sweat-sheened face.

"What?" Polchiek said.

"A dark bird," she said, looking straight at the Doctor. "It was very dark because the gentleman wished only for one candle to light us, but I saw it. A dark bird, or a nightwing."

The Doctor looked puzzled. "A dark bird?" she said, frowning.

"I think we have learned all we can from you, madam," Quettil said to the Doctor. "You may go."

"No," the King said to her. "Stay, Doctor."

Quettil's jaw worked.

"Were you doing what I think you were doing?" the King asked the young woman. He glanced at the Doctor. The orchestra faltered in the ballroom.

The young woman turned her empty-looking face slowly towards the King. "Sir," she said, and I knew she did not realise who she was talking to. "Yes, sir. On the couch there." She pointed to a couch in the centre of the room. A candelabrum holding one extinguished candle lay knocked over nearby.

"And Duke Walen was watching from behind the screen," Adlain said.

"It was his pleasure, sir." The young woman looked down at the man kneeling weeping by her side. "We saw no harm in it."

"Well, there was harm, madam," Quettil said quietly, his voice hardly more than a breath.

"We'd been doing it a while, sirs," the young woman said, her empty, staring eyes directed towards the Doctor. "There was a noise. I thought it was somebody trying the window doors again, sir, but then the old gentleman cried out and the screen came tumbling down and I saw the nightwing."

"You saw the Duke?" Polchiek asked her.

She swivelled her head towards him. "Yes, sir."

"You saw nobody else?"

"Just the gentleman, sir," she said, looking back to the Doctor. "In his shirt. He had his hand up here." She shrugged on one side only, and looked down to her left at the top of her chest near her shoulder. "He was crying out that he'd been murdered."