Kheda sipped at his own wine and the cold bite of alcohol surprised him into an unguarded comment. 'I'm surprised to find Mirrel serving us something this intoxicating at such a tense time.'

As he spoke, Mirrel appeared but it wasn't his words agitating the headdress of trembling gold and silver bird wings that all but obscured her dense midnight curls. 'Moni, my dearest, come and talk to Chay. She wants to discuss sending some of her tinsmiths to your domain for a season or so, for a trade of skills.'

Clumsy, Mirrel, clumsy. That arrival's rather too precipitate and your voice is certainly too urgent for such a trivial request. Who ordered you to make sure I didn't get a chance to count the links in Moni Redigal's chain of connections to the wizard-plagued north? As if I needed to ask.

'Don't let me stand in the way of your duties, my ladies.' Kheda smiled and bowed to relinquish his claim on Moni before handing his crystal goblet back to Telouet. 'Find me some fruit juice.'

Kheda watched several of the Ulla slaves sliding speculative glances at Telouet as his body slave crossed the room to the broad array of gold and silver ewers standing in trays of crushed ice melting so fast the harried servants were constantly replenishing it.

'Lilla juice, I'm afraid.' On his return, Telouet handed Kheda a goblet with a rueful grin. 'That's all there is apart from wines.'

'What's Safar thinking of?' Kheda shook his head as he took it. 'Ah well, maybe he'll miscalculate his own drinking and drop dead in tomorrow's heat. Do you want to circulate a little, Telouet? See what you can learn for us? Some of those girls look as if they might trade some useful information for the pleasure of your presence in their bed.'

And they'll certainly learn nothing from Telouet, who assuredly knows idle chatter isn't among the proper uses for his tongue in the throes of passion.

'I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you, my lord,' Telouet said, though not without regret. 'I was talking to Ganil and he says the women slaves are desperate to get with child by some outsider, to get some claim on another domain and the chance of escape from this pesthole.'

'That's a new development.' Kheda frowned as he drank. 'Have their lives really become so insupportable here? Or is Safar prompting them? I wouldn't put it past him to come up with some spurious objection if one of his slaves insisted on her rights to demand support from the father of her child. He could easily finesse an argument over that into a wider conflict.'

'Or look to plant a spy on us.' Telouet's gaze slid to a pretty slave girl demure in a gown of silk gauze that left little to the imagination. 'Do you want me to try and find out?'

'Only if you find the ground bitterspine leaves in honey paste in the bottom of my physic chest first,' Kheda advised. 'Tip your sword with that before you sheathe it.'

'Dear me, you look very serious.' Kheda turned to find Taisia Ritsem at his elbow. 'But then this is rather a dull gathering. Isn't Janne with you?'

Kheda smiled with genuine pleasure. 'My lady Taisia, a delight to see you, as always.'

'Save your flattery for Mirrel,' she recommended with a fond twinkle as her body slave retreated to a discreet distance along with Telouet. No great beauty, Taisia wore a solitary comb to tame her dark, wiry hair, an elegant piece of silver filigree. The vivid blue of her draperies flattered her warm brown skin, a plain dress caught at each shoulder with a brooch of knotted silver strands worn beneath a wrap painted with a brilliant shoal of coral fishes. She wore a single necklace, a heavy chain with an uncut sapphire pendant nestling at the base of her throat.

'Then I'll say you're looking tired and apprehensive, shall I?' Kheda could well see what her body slave had sought to conceal beneath her cosmetics. 'And mourning Olkai.'

The barest suggestion of tears came and went in Taisia's dark eyes. 'Much to Mirrel's surprise, with her so long departed from our domain.' Her tone was acid.

'Rekha always says Mirrel's worst flaw is assuming everyone else thinks as she does. Janne should be here soon. Perhaps she's having trouble convincing Itrac to face everyone.' Kheda looked towards a stir by the door but it was only Safar arriving, all expansive gestures and jovial smiles.

Where did you go, when you left our council, rather than coming straight here as you implied? You haven't changed that yellow tunic, and is it just the heat prompting all that sweat darkening the armpits or have you been about something more exerting?

An instant later Janne's appearance drove any such considerations out of Kheda's head. Within a couple of breaths, all heads were turned to the door, captivated by the sight.

Janne wore a simple dress of dove-grey silk, two lengths of cloth sewn at shoulder and sides, shaped only with a sash of the same material. Her hair was drawn back in a single plait, oiled to sleekness with no jewel to relieve the smoky darkness, and the merest hint of silver highlighted her eyes and lips. Janne's sole adornment was a single string of pearls that reached to her waist. A single string, but pearls that would take a lifetime to match, even with access to every harvest that reefs could offer the length and breadth of the Archipelago. The black pearls at the centre must have been years in the making at the bottom of the ocean, layer upon layer of radiance building a handful of perfect spheres broader than Kheda's thumbnail. Lesser in size but no less flawless, the pearls on either side faded through charcoal darkness to a grey of vanishing smoke then brightened to the clear pallor of a dawn cloud. Then the colour of each successive bead grew richer, more noticeable until the pearls that disappeared beneath Janne's hair were a sunrise gold.

'Janne, my dear.' Mirrel's brittle cry broke through the silence that had fallen.

She moved to embrace Janne who smiled warmly and hugged her close. 'Mirrel, so good to see you.'

Birut was standing at Janne's shoulder. The slave's burnished mail was patterned with brass rings polished to a golden shine. He wore a heavy collar of gold set with crystals and the gilded brow band of his helm bore more of the same. Kheda hid his smile in his glass.

Dear me, Mirrel, with Janne stood between you, your fabulous dress looks no better than this mere swordsman's cheap simulacrum of wealth.

Just as everyone in the room was coming to that conclusion, Janne beckon to Itrac, who had been waiting on the threshold. 'Mirrel, you remember Itrac Chazen? Of course you do. She's staying with us until she can return to her own domain under favourable portents.'

'Indeed.' There was just a hint of disbelief in Mirrel's smile.

'You don't think Chazen Saril will object, when he hears she's being dressed like one of your junior wives?' Taisia murmured to Kheda, raising an eyebrow.

'I'm sure Janne knows what she's doing.' Though Kheda was as nonplussed as everyone else to see Itrac wearing a triple-stranded collar of the pink pearls that were one of Daish's most coveted treasures. Her white silk tunic was belted with another three rows, her wrists bore identical bracelets, and anklets in the same style gathered the fullness of her loose white trousers. Her long plait was all but identical to Janne's.

'Those look fine enough to be talisman pearls,' speculated Taisia. 'Itrac's, I mean, as well as Janne's.'

'You don't think she looks more like a daughter than a wife?' Kheda cocked his head at Taisia as Safar advanced on Itrac with expansive gestures and a smile that didn't entirely disguise the cunning in his eyes touched with more than a hint of lust. The contrast between his predatory bulk and her vulnerable slenderness was striking.

'She does rather, doesn't she?' Taisia allowed. 'And one barely of an age to be wed.'