were too soft for him to catch the gist of the conversation, but the erratic punctuation of Torsin's coughing left no doubt in Alec's mind that he'd found his man again.

There were at least two others with him, a man and a woman— Lhaar a Iriel herself, perhaps.

The conference did not last long. The unseen conspirators soon disappeared back into the house. Alec waited a few minutes to see if they'd return, then headed back to the front of the building to wait.

Torsin emerged a few minutes later, but not alone. A man walked with him for several minutes before turning in the opposite direction.

Alec was still trying to decide which one to follow when a familiar shape emerged from the shadows beside him.

"Seregil?"

"You take Torsin; I'll follow this other fellow. Watch out for Khatme along the way. You won't be welcome here." With that, Seregil disappeared as quickly as he'd come.

Torsin led Alec straight back to their own door, the front one this time. After exchanging a few words with the sentries, he went inside.

Looking up at the colos, Alec saw lights still burning there. Not knowing what excuses had been made for his absence or Seregil's, he went in through the stable yard and up the back stair. Halfway up, he heard Klia's voice, and Torsin's.

"I thought you'd turned in already," Klia said.

"A short walk in the night air helps me sleep," Torsin replied. No mention of where he'd been.

Alec waited until he heard two doors close, then continued on to his chamber and settled in to wait for Seregil so they could get their stories straight. That seemed a safe enough plan, far more attractive than being the one to tell Klia that her trusted minister has just been consorting with their opposition behind her back.

Seregil's man was not wearing a sen'gai, but he guessed from the cut of his tunic that he was from one of the eastern clans. He was soon proven right. The man led him to the house of Ulan i Sathil.

Lurking in a nearby doorway, Seregil pondered the possible connections. Intractable Khatme and worldly Viresse; the two clans were divided as much by their ideology as they were by the spur of mountains that lay between their ancestral lands. The only uniting factor he knew of was their opposition to the Skalan treaty.

The greater question was whether Torsin knew of the connection.

He returned to the guest house to find the colos dark, the music stilled. Entering by the back gate, he found Korandor and Nikides on guard duty.

"Has anyone else come or gone this way tonight, Corporal?" he asked.

"Just Lord Torsin, my lord," Nikides replied. "He left a while back and we haven't seen him since."

"I thought he'd turned in for the night."

"Couldn't sleep, he said. Now, I say night air's the worst thing for weak lungs, but there's no telling these nobles anything—begging your pardon, my lord."

Seregil gave the man a knowing wink and continued on as if he'd just been out on a constitutional of his own.

He found Alec pacing impatiently in their room, every lamp blazing. Shadows still clung in the corners, resisting his superstitious efforts to banish them.

"Seems they can't carry on without us." Seregil grinned, pointing up toward the abandoned colos.

"Klia came down about half an hour ago," Alec told him, coming to a rest in the center of the room. "What did they say when I didn't come back?"

"Kheeta had some story about you feeling your wine, but he slipped me the nod. What happened?"

Alec shrugged. "Luck in the shadows, if you can call it that. I just happened to be there when Torsin left. He came straight back here from Khatme tupa after I saw you. Klia met him in the passage as he came up."

"Did she know where he'd been?"

"I couldn't tell. What about your man?"

"Care to guess?"

"Viresse?"

"Smart boy. Too bad we don't know what was said either place."

"Then you didn't learn anything, either." Alec sank into a chair by the hearth. "What do you suppose Torsin was up to?"

"The queen's business, I hope," Seregil replied doubtfully, sprawling in the chair opposite.

"Do we tell Klia?"

Seregil closed his eyes and massaged the lids. "That's the real question, isn't it? I doubt that spying on our own people was quite what she had in mind when she invited us along.". "Maybe not, but she did say she was worried that he might be too sympathetic to Viresse. This proves it."

"It proves nothing, except that he and someone with connections to Ulan i Sathil met at the house of Lhaar a Iriel."

"So, what do we do?»

Seregil shrugged. "Bide our time a little longer, and keep our eyes open."

17 ALEC KEEPS BUSY

Bide our time. To Alec, it seemed all they'd done since they arrived was wait, held impotent by the strictures of diplomacy and the plodding pace of Aurenfaie debate. The last thing he felt like doing was biding his time now that something interesting had finally happened.

He rose early the next morning and took himself out for a dawn ride around the city walls. The distant hills floated like islands above the thick mist rising from the rivers. The bleat of sheep and goats came from closer by. Reaching the Nha'mahat, he stopped to exchange greetings with a rhui'auros who was setting out fresh offerings for the dragons. At this hour the little creatures fluttered in swarms thick as spring swallows, circling the tower. Others scrabbled over the bowls in the arcade. Several lit on Alec and he froze, not relishing the thought of another painful bite, no matter how auspicious the marks might be.

Riding back through the Haunted City he passed the House of Pillars and was surprised to see Nyal's horse, a black gelding with three white stockings, grazing there next to a sturdy white palfrey. Alec had an

eye for horses and recognized this little mare as the mount Lady Amali had ridden over the mountains from Gedre.

If it hadn't been for Beka, he might have ridden on. Instead, he tethered Windrunner out of sight and hurried inside.

Voices echoed from several directions, and he set off following those that sounded most promising to the pools at the center of the sprawling place. At last, he found his way to a small, weed-grown court some distance further on, where the comforting rise and fall of a man's voice sounded a counterpoint to a woman's soft weeping. Creeping closer, Alec slipped behind a tattered tapestry that still hung near the courtyard's edge and peered out through a hole.

Amali sat on the edge of an empty fountain, her face in her hands. Nyal stood over her, stroking her hair gently.

"Forgive me," Amali said through her fingers. "But who else could I turn to? Who else would understand?"

Nyal drew her close, and for an instant Alec scarcely recognized him. The Ra'basi's handsome face was suffused with an anger Alec had never seen in him before. When he spoke again, his voice was almost too low to hear. Alec could make out only the words "hurt you."

Amali raised her tear-stained face and clasped his hands beseechingly. "No! No, you must never think such a thing! He's in such distress at times I hardly know him. Word came that another village near the Khatme border has been abandoned. It's as if Akhendi is dying, too!"

Nyal murmured something and she shook her head again. "He cannot. The people would not hear of it. He won't abandon them!"

Nyal pulled away and walked off a few steps, clearly agitated. "Then what is it you want of me?"

"I don't know!" She reached out to him. "Only—I needed to know you are still my friend, someone I can open my heart to. I'm so alone there!"

"It's where you chose to be," Nyal retorted bitterly, then relented as she dissolved into tears again.

"I am your friend, your dear friend," he assured her, gathering her close and rocking her gently. "You can always come to me, talia. Always. Just give me this much: Do you ever regret your decision? Even just a little?"