"Bene," she whispered to the spider, "forte." Barely able to see it, she squeezed its abdomen. Fine silver thread spun out from her hand, looping around a beam. She kicked her skirts free, and dropped upon the spider's thread toward the iron-hard ground. Her arm yanked up as the thread stretched, and held. She rotated, once, twice; her feet struck the ground with a thump, and she staggered for her lost balance.

The drop should have broken both her legs. Her impromptu spell had worked. She opened her right hand upon a gooey, crunchy, smeared blob.

Oh. I'm sorry, spider. A wave of nausea nearly overwhelmed her, and she rubbed her palm hastily upon the warm rough stone of the monastery wall to scrape off the remains.

Dizzied with the drop and the afterburn of magic along her nerves, it took her a moment to realize she was standing openly in the dusk against the wall, a clear target for any Losimon crossbowman sharp enough to have noticed the movement of her controlled fall. The spider thread, its enchantment consumed, had blown to dust upon tile wind; she could not climb up it again. Nor make that poor squashed spider spin another. She dropped flat to the ground, panting. Oh, God. Are You revenged for my pride already? Mother Mary! But no quarrel hummed viciously above her head; no shouts rained down. Only the first croakings of frogs and the last twitterings of buds floated upon the cooling darkness. She waited several minutes, rigid with fear. The darkness deepened.

Now you've done it. You can't get back in. You have to go on. She wriggled around until she freed the silver snake belt concealed under her bodice, and wound it back openly around her waist. She took a breath, swung to a crouch, bundled up her skirts, and scurried toward the woods.

The shade was blacker, under the trees, but her footsteps crackled among the leaf litter, weeds, and sticks. She stepped as carefully as she could. If she could slip through the Losimon lines and reach the road to town—

She did not scream, when the dark man in soldier's leathers leapt upon her. It wasn't as if she weren't expecting something of the sort. Still her breath caught in her throat, and her heart pounded as he spun her around. "Ha!" he cried. "Got you!"

"No. I have you," she stated, then stopped, taken aback. Even in the dimness it was clear that the man was bald as a plate, and clean-shaved. But he wore a woolen shirt under his leather vest; she could smell the dried sweat in it. "Piro," she said clearly.

His sleeves burst into flames, twining around his arms like orange flowers in the dark. Fey, she walked off into the wildly wavering torch shadows while he was still screaming and rolling on the ground. She didn't even run. His cries would bring his comrades to his aid; even now she could hear them crashing through the brush behind her. But not, she thought, after her. Few among the Losimon rank and file would be fool enough to chase an unknown sorceress through the dark fast enough to risk actually catching her. She strolled on awash in a land of disconnected lassitude, very much like the times she'd drunk too much unwatered wine. She was without fear, and wanted to sleep. Her fingers felt thick as sausages; her legs felt like wood.

This woodlot to the south of the monastery featured a ravine which ran down to the lake, where the ground flattened out and the road crossed. She slipped and scrambled down the slope, scraping her hands on the rough tree bark to slow herself. She could feel stickiness from the blood, but her hands seemed numb to pain. At the bottom a nearly dry stream oozed slimy black around pale blotches of rocks. She picked her way among them.

She froze, crouching among some fallen logs, her white sleeves crossed under her breasts, when a couple of Losimon soldiers clanked past, swords drawn. Intent on the shouts echoing faintly from the vicinity of the monastery uphill, they ran by without seeing her. They must have been guarding the road, for when she reached the dusty track, a vague ribbon in the moonless dark, it was deserted. The lake lay like black silk.

She turned south and started walking home.

After an age, the reverberations of pain through Thur's body died away enough for him to uncurl from around his throbbing crotch and try to sit up. The north-facing window of the cell admitted no creeping patch of sunlight to mark the time, but the deep blue color of the bit of sky he could see suggested that the afternoon was waning. Gingerly, he put his hand to his swollen lips, touched loose-moving teeth, and winced. Sheer chance he had not bitten his tongue in half. His sides and back and kidneys ached from booted kicks, almost eclipsing the clamor of yesterday's sword cut broken open again. His red cap was gone, likewise his shoes. His knitted hose were torn, and unraveling badly. By pushing himself up sideways he got his back to the wall and his legs out in front of him. He looked around at last.

Lord Pia sat cross-legged upon a straw pallet, which had its own scrap of blanket. The castellan rocked gently back and forward, and nibbled at the blanket's corner in much the same absent way as a man might bite his fingernails. His red-rimmed eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Thur. His fine silk hose were all riddled and ruined too, Thur noticed with a sense of dreary fellowship.

"Who are you?" Lord Pia husked, not dropping his unnerving stare, nor ceasing his rocking.

"My name is Thur Ochs," Thur mumbled, muffled by his puffy mouth. "Brother to Captain Uri Ochs. I came seeking my brother, but Lord Ferrante has killed him." His tale sounded almost mechanical in his own ears, leaden, so often had he repeated it.

"Uri's brother? Truly?" Lord Pia's stare sharpened. "He spoke of a brother ... I saw him die."

"He mentioned your name, from time to time, in his letters, Lord Pia," Thur ducked his head respectfully. Both men had been Sandrino's officers; they must have worked together daily.

"Uri was a good fellow," Lord Pia remarked, staring now into the middle distance. "Sometimes he helped me to catch bats, in the caves west of the lake. He was not afraid of the caves, after the mines, he said." He fingered the silver embroidery on his tunic, the glitter, Thur realized upon a closer look, of tiny bats ranked wingtip to wingtip edging collar and cuffs. Had Lady Pia stitched them?

"Oh?" said Thur neutrally, remembering how mention of the little flying animals had set Lord Pia off last night.

"A bat's the thing, you know. Clever creatures. I think a man might fly as a bat flies, without feathers, if he could but devise wings light enough, yet strong.... The leather was too heavy, even for Uri's sword and shield arms, next time I shall try parchment.... Do you know, bats eat the marsh mosquitoes that plague us? Their fur is very soft, like a mole's. And they can be trained not to bite the hand that feeds them. Unlike men." The castellan brooded. "To think that men dare to call them evil, only because they fly in the night, when men do murder in the broad day—the hypocrites!"

"They are God's creatures too, I am sure," Thur said warily.

"Ah! So good to find a man who is not prejudiced by idle superstitions."

"I often saw bats in the old mineshafts. They do no more harm than the kobolds."

"You are a miner, eh? So Uri said. Not afraid of the dark, either? Good fellow." The castellan brightened. Lord Pia's fellow-feeling for the bats seemed more enthusiastic than irrational, but for a certain skewed intensity of gaze when he spoke of them.

"I ... saw Lady Pia earlier today," Thur offered, even more hesitantly. "She seemed unharmed. She stays bravely by the Duchess and Lady Julia. Ferrante is keeping them all together in the north gate-tower."