Quiss couldn't recall the whole story now, but it went on for a long time and involved the waiter whispering the answer in a room full of bees which then built some sort of nest which something called the message crow ate and then started flying.

After that there were some more funny beasts, most of which seemed to end up eating each other, then a place on the surface of wherever-they-were with thousands of tiny lakes which thousands of animals marched on to and spontaneously combusted, melting the ice of the lakes in a certain sequence which some sort of organic communication satellite with a message laser recognised... after that it got even more complicated.

It was, in other words, foolproof. Impersonating or somehow coercing the waiter who did the whispering was pointless too; as a final check whoever or whatever arrived to take them away from the castle would ask the rooks and crows what they had seen, to make sure there had been no tricks employed.

The whole thing, of course, happened in some sort of time warp, which was why, despite the labyrinthine complexity of the answering process, they always found out the response to their answer within a matter of minutes. Quiss found it all very depressing.

Well, they were about to finish this game. Perhaps, he told himself, they would get it right this time. They had only about one good answer left to the riddle, which was worrying in one way but encouraging in another. Maybe this one had to be the right one, maybe they would finally say the right thing and get away from here.

Quiss tried to think of the things he used to try not to think about; the things he had missed so much at first that it had really hurt to think about them. He could think of them quite easily now, quite painlessly. The good things in life, the many pleasures of the flesh and mind, the joy of battle, plot and drunken reminiscing.

It all seemed so far away now. It felt as if it had all happened to somebody else, some young son or grandson, some other person entirely. Could it be that he was starting to think like an old man? Just because he looked like one was no real reason, but perhaps there was a sort of back-pressure, a feedback cycle of effect and cause which made his thoughts gradually fit the husk they filled. He didn't know. Maybe it was just all that had happened here in the Castle Doors, all the disappointments, all the missed chances (those brown woman-arms, that bright promise of a contrail, that sun, that sun in this overcast place!), all the chaos and the order, the seemingly purposeless, apparently directed insanity of the castle. Maybe it just got to you after a while.

Yes, he thought, the castle. Perhaps it makes us as we are, as we are to be. Perhaps it moulds us, like those numbers ever circling to destruction, reincarnation. Indeed: disintegration and break-up, an epilogue at birth... why not? He would even be sorry to leave, in some ways. The small minions he used as contacts in the kitchens were hardly the crack troops he was used to, or even battle-honed mercenaries, but they had their own nervous, inefficient attraction; they amused him. He would miss them.

He laughed at the thought of the barber, he recalled meeting the master mason, and the superintendent of mines; both surly, proud, impressive men he would like the time to know better. Even the seneschal himself was interesting once he could be persuaded to talk, ever disregarding his ability to evade catastrophe.

But a lifetime, or more than a lifetime, here?

Unbidden, the thought suddenly filled him with deep, awful despair. Yes, he would miss this place, in some strange, twisted way, if they were able to leave at last, but that was only natural; as a prison it was very mild indeed, and anywhere not unendingly unpleasant could inspire nostalgia given enough time, sufficient scope for the processes of memory to select the good and neglect the bad. That was not the point, that was simply not the point.

To stay here would be to fail, to give in, to compound and affirm the error he had made in the first place which brought him here. It was duty. Not to his side or even his comrades; they were not involved here. It was duty to himself.

How strange that only now, in this odd place, he should understand fully a phrase, an idea he had heard and dismissed all the way through his education and training!

"Ah!" Ajayi said, breaking Quiss's thoughts. He looked up to see the woman reaching over the board, cupping her hand and blowing into the half-bowl it formed, directing her breath down onto an area of the playing surface and scattering the snow flakes which had settled there. "There," she said, placing the two tiles down together in one corner of the board, then smiling proudly at her companion. Quiss looked at the two newly set-down tiles.

"That's it, then," he said, nodding.

"Don't you think it's good?" Ajayi said. She pointed.

Quiss shrugged noncommittally. Ajayi suspected he didn't understand exactly the new meanings she had made on the board.

"It'll do," Quiss said, looking not particularly impressed. "It's finished the game. That's the main thing."

"Well, thank Kryste for that," the red crow said. "I was just about falling asleep." It flapped from its perch on the broken column and hovered over the board, inspecting it.

"I didn't know you could hover," Ajayi said to the bird; its wingbeats, just above them, disturbed the snow falling on them and the board, making artificial flurries.

"I'm not supposed to," the red crow said absently, eyes fixed on the board. "But then crows aren't supposed to talk either, are they? Yes, that looks all right. I suppose."

Quiss watched the red bird, flapping energetically above them. He made a face when it gave its disdainful approval of their game. The red crow made a sound like a sneeze, then said, "What's your contribution to the wit and wisdom of the universe this time, then?"

"Why should we tell you?" Quiss said.

"Why not?" the red crow said indignantly.

"Well..." Quiss said, thinking,'... because we don't like you."

"Good grief, I'm only doing my job," the red crow said, sounding genuinely hurt. Ajayi coughed on a laugh.

"Oh, tell it," she said, waving one hand dismissively.

Quiss gave another sour look, first at her, then the bird, cleared his throat and said, "Our answer is 'You can't...' no, I mean 'There is no such thing as either.' "

"Oh," the red crow said, still hovering, unimpressed, "wow."

"Well, have you got any better answers?" Quiss said aggressively.

"Plenty, but I'm not telling you bastards."

"Well," Ajayi said, standing up stiffly and dusting the powdery white snow from her furs, "I think we should get inside and find an attendant."

"Don't bother," the red crow said. "Allow me; it'll be a pleasure." It cackled with laughter and flew off." 'No such thing as either'; ha ha ha..." its voice trailed back to them as it flew away.

Ajayi picked the small table and the board up slowly and together she and Quiss made their way through the tumbled masonry of the roof towards the intact floors, some way off. Quiss watched the red crow flap slowly through the snow-filled air until he lost sight of it.

"Do you think it's gone off to tell somebody?"

"Maybe," Ajayi said, holding the small table carefully and watching where she put her feet.

"Think we can trust it?" Quiss said.

"Probably not."

"Hmm," Quiss said, stroking his smooth chin.

"Don't worry," Ajayi said, stepping over some cracked slate blocks as they made their way towards the shelter of a broken arcade, "we can always tell somebody ourselves."

"Hmm, I suppose so," Quiss said as they entered the arcade, stepping over some of its fallen columns and the remains of part of the roof. They came under the shelter of the roof where it was still good, and as they did so Quiss slipped on a patch of ice, crying out as he slid, putting out both hands, trying to steady himself on a column on one side and Ajayi on the other. He knocked the board.