"He told me that of course he knew. Did I think he was stupid? And oh, he was flattered, but it would be even more unwise for him to respond to me than it had been for me to make the declaration in the first place. Besides, he only liked, he only felt comfortable with pretty, dainty, delicate women who had no brains. That was what he liked. Not wit, not intelligence, certainly not learning." She snorted. "Vacuity. That's what he wants. A pretty face fronting an empty head! Ha!" She threw back the last of her drink, then refilled the goblet, spilling some of the liquor on her gown and the floor.

"You fucking cretin, Vosill," she muttered to herself.

My blood ran cold at her words. I wanted to hug her, to hold her, to take her in my arms… and at the same time I wanted to be anywhere else but there, then.

"He wants stupidity, well… Oh, do you see the irony of it, Oelph?" she said. "The only moronic thing I've done since I landed was to tell him I loved him. It was utterly, completely, definitively and absolutely imbecilic, and yet it still isn't enough. He wants consistent dim-wittedness." She stared into her goblet. "Can't say I blame him." She drank. She coughed, and had to put the goblet down on the bench. The goblet's base settled on her old dagger, so that the vessel over-balanced and fell with a crash to the floor, breaking and splashing the alcohol across the boards. She brought her feet down from the bench and put them under the chair she sat on, her head in her hands again as she curled up and started to weep.

"Oh, Oelph," she cried. "What have I done?" She rocked to and fro on the seat, her face buried in her hands, her long fingers like a cage around her tangle of red hair. "What have I done? What have I done?"

I felt terrified. I did not know what to do. I had been feeling so mature, so grown up, so capable and in control over these last couple of seasons, but now I felt like a child again, quite perfectly unsure what to do when confronted with the pain and distress of an adult.

I hesitated, a terrible feeling growing in me that whatever I did next it would be the wrong thing, the wrong thing entirely, and I would suffer for it for ever more and worse still so might she, but eventually, while she rocked back and forth and moaned piteously to herself, I put my goblet down at my feet and got out of my seat and went to squat by her. I reached out one hand and placed it gently on her shoulder. She did not react. I let my hand go back and forth with her rocking, then slid my arm further round her shoulders. Somehow, touching her like that, she suddenly seemed smaller than I had always thought her.

Still she did not seem to think I had committed any terrible transgression by touching her so, and, finding my courage and taking it by the scruff of its neck, I moved closer to her and put both my arms around her, holding her, slowly stopping her rocking, feeling the warmth of her body and tasting the sweet air of her breath. She let me hold her.

I was doing what I had imagined doing only moments earlier, doing something I had imagined doing for the last year, something I thought would. never, could never happen, something I had dreamed about night after night after night for season upon season, and something that I had hoped, and still hoped somehow might lead to an even more intimate embrace, no matter that that had seemed almost absurdly unlikely, and indeed still did.

I felt her grip on her head loosen. She brought her arms out and put them round me. Embraced by her. My head seemed to swim. Her face, hot and wet from her tears, was next to mine now. I shook with terror, wondering if I dare turn my face towards hers, bring my mouth close to her lips.

"Oh, Oelph," she said into my shoulder. "It is not fair to use you so."

"You may use me as you wish, mistress," I said, gulping on the words. I could smell some delicate perfume rising from her warm body, its tender scent not swamped by the fumes of the alcohol, and infinitely more heady. "Is it…?" I began, then had to stop to swallow on a dry mouth. "Is it so terrible to take the risk of telling somebody the feelings you have for them, even if you suspect they feel nothing similar for you? Is it wrong, mistress?"

She pushed herself gently away from me. Her face, tearstreaked, puffy-eyed and red, was still calmly beautiful. Her eyes seemed to search mine. "It is never wrong, Oelph," she said softly. She reached down and took both my hands in hers. "But I am no more blind than the King. Nor any more able to offer requital."

I wondered stupidly what she meant for a moment before realising, and feeling a terrible sadness fall slowly on my soul, as though a great shroud had been dropped inside me, settling with a sorrowful, implacable inevitability over all my hopes and dreams, obliterating them for ever.

She put one hand to my cheek, and her fingers were still warm and dry and tender and firm at once, and her skin, I swear, smelled sweet. "You are very precious to me, dear Oelph."

I heard those words and my heart sank farther, and steeper.

"Am I, mistress?"

"Of course." She drew away from me and looked down at the smashed goblet. "Of course you are." She settled back in her seat and took a deep breath, pushing a hand through her hair, smoothing down her gown and attempting to button its yoke. Her fingers would not do as she willed. I longed, from far away, to help her, or rather not to help her with that task, but eventually she gave up anyway, and just pulled the long collar to. She looked up into my face, drying her cheeks with her fingers. "I think I need to sleep, Oelph. Will you excuse me, please?"

I lifted my goblet from the floor and put it on the workbench. "Of course, mistress. Is there anything I can do?"

"No." She shook her head. "No, there is nothing you can do." She looked away.

"I told the boy a story of my own."

"You did?"

"Yes. It was a pack of lies."

"Well, all stories are lies, in a way."

"This was worse. This was a true story turned into a lie."

"You must have felt there was a reason to do that."

"Yes, I did.,

"What was the reason you felt that way?"

"Because I wanted to tell the story, but I could not tell it truly to a child. It is the only story I know worth telling, the story I think most about, the story that I live again and again in my dreams, the story that feels as if it needs to be told, and yet a child could not understand it, or if they could, it would be an inhuman thing to tell them it."

"Hmm. It doesn't sound like a story you have ever told me."

"Shall I tell it to you now?"

"It sounds like a painful story to tell."

"It is. Perhaps it is painful to hear, too."

"Do you want to tell it to me?"

"I don't know."

The Protector returned to his palace. His son still lived, though his grip on life seemed tenuous and frail. Doctor BreDelle took over from Doctor AeSimil but he was no more able to determine what was wrong with the boy than he was able to treat him successfully. Lattens drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes unable to recognise his father or his nurse, on other occasions sitting up in bed and pronouncing himself feeling much better and almost recovered. These periods of lucidity and apparent recovery grew further and further apart, however, and the boy spent more and more time curled up in his bed, asleep or in a halfway stage between sleep and wakefulness, eyes closed, limbs twitching, muttering to himself, turning and moving and jerking as though in a fit. He ate almost nothing, and would drink only water or very diluted fruit juice.

DeWar still worried that Lattens might be being poisoned in some subtle way. He arranged with the Protector and the superintendent of an orphans" home that a set of twins be brought to the palace to act as tasters for the boy. The two identical boys were a year younger than Lattens.