The chamber’s rear-interior door chimed. He checked the monitor.

It was that fool Chrolleser… He started to look away.

… and Sharrow.

He looked back, stunned.

Chrolleser looked feverish and sweaty; he held the HandCannon he’d asked to keep after the fiasco in the Keep. It was pointed at Sharrow’s head.

“Sir!” he gulped. “Sir; look! I have her! And she has brought the Gun!”

He closed his mouth; it must have fallen open. He pulled the monitor view back. The two were alone in the long corridor that led back to the old elevator shaft. The Gun was strapped to Sharrow’s side. Her eyes looked old and defeated, her face grey and wan. So that was who had wrecked the door! He should have guessed.

“Come in!” he yelled, punching the door button. He buzzed the Restricted Library, switched the desk camera on and directed the transmission to the Library, then jumped up from his seat and ran across the chamber, up the flight of stone steps and along the balcony to the opening door.

He skidded to a stop in front of it as Sharrow clicked a magazine back into place in the stock of the HandCannon, cocked the gun and pointed it at a spot between his eyes.

Behind her Chrolleser seemed to have fainted, head lolling to one side, even though he was still standing up. Then something moved underneath his bulky habit and he bent forward. The actor collapsed to the floor, moaning; the android the team had taken with them from Vembyr slid out from under the back of Chrolleser’s habit, holding a laser rifle.

He was aware that his mouth had opened again. He stared from Sharrow to Chrolleser to the android, then back to Sharrow again.

She smiled. “Hello, Geis,” she said. The HandCannon in her bandaged hand barely wavered as she punched him in the jaw with her other fist.

“No! No, Sharrow! You’ve got the whole thing wrong! I captured Molgarin. He’s my prisoner. Look, I’m just glad you’re safe!” He laughed. “That’s quite a right jab you have there, but come on, this is ridiculous. Sharrow. Untie me.”

The chamber was big, irregularly shaped on several levels and tall-ceilinged. It was so packed with treasures that it looked like nothing more than a giant junk shop. Geis sat tied to one seat, Molgarin or Chrolleser or whatever his name was to another. The android stood in front of them, the laser rifle in its hand.

Geis had bled a little from one side of his mouth. He worked his chin now and again as he talked to her. The other man was mumbling, barely conscious.

Sharrow walked round the big stone table that dominated the chamber’s central area and on which she had deposited the Lazy Gun. The enormous table was loaded to overflowing with a whole trove of treasures; the less valuable items were not quite priceless.

She looked up from the casing of the Universal Principles to a rack of weapons she recognised from the undercroft of the tower in the fjord. A system of pulleys kept a load of jewel-encrusted harnesses suspended over the table. The harnesses looked about the right size for bandamyions. On the wall behind were a couple of giant diamond leaf ikons from the time of the Lizard Court. They were each the size of a house and she had read about them in school; they had been missing for three thousand years. There was a small door underneath the two ikons with wall tracks leading from it; the chain system extended even to here.

She drew her hand over the ceramic cover of a book probably old enough to have predated the first millennium, and looked round the chamber again, rubbing her fingers together. She thought she recognised some of the more classical treasures from the old gold mine store, deep under the Blue Hills in Piphram.

“You’ve always liked a clutter, haven’t you, Geis?”

“Sharrow, please,” Geis said. “You’re making a terrible mistake here.”

She turned and frowned at him. “Good grief,” she said. “Do people actually say that? Well, well.”

She opened the case of the Universal Principles. The Crownstar Addendum lay inside, draped over what looked like a piece of cut glass the size and approximate shape of a crown.

“What’s this?” she said, hauling the heavy, thickly glittering ring out. There was some sort of writing engraved round the rim; she didn’t recognise the alphabet.

“That,” Geis said, “is the Crownstar.”

“This lump of glass?” She didn’t try to disguise the disappointment in her voice. The so-called Crownstar’s prongs were cut off-set, like a series of sharp, canted escarpments.

“It’s not glass,” Geis said, sighing. “It’s diamond. A single, pure flawless diamond. Be careful with it.”

“Uh-huh,” she said sceptically. “Feril?”

The android looked at the torus in her hands.

“It is a diamond,” it said.

“See?” Geis said to her, smiling. “The Crownstar.”

“Well,” Feril said with a hint of apology in its voice, “it might be that, too, but originally it was part of a triple-filament deep-crust drill-bit.”

“What?” Geis said, looking at the android as though it was mad.

“Fourth millennium,” Feril said. “They lost one drill at ninety kilometres under the Blaist mountains and the replacement was never used. That must be part of the back-up head.”

“What about the inscription?” Geis protested. “The runes?”

“Serial numbers,” Feril said.

“Rubbish!” Geis said. He looked furious, but didn’t take the argument any further. Molgarin/Chrolleser groaned in the seat alongside: Geis glared at him. “Oh, shut up!”

Sharrow put the Crownstar back in the casing with the Addendum and closed the cover.

She paced on round the table. She drew an ornamented, jewelstudded sword from an equally impractical-looking scabbard. The sword’s edges were thick and flat. She shook her head and slid the sword back into its sheath.

“What exactly is this place, Geis?” she asked as she continued to look around. “Some sort of den?”

“Breyguhn found it,” Geis said with a tired air, “when she came in here looking for the Universal Principles. After the Sad Brothers refused to ransom her, I meant to use this place to provide apartments for her, even though they insisted she still had to be chained. Later they went back even on that concession, but by that time I was looking for somewhere secure and I came to an arrangement with the Sad Brothers.”

“And where is Brey?” Sharrow asked.

Geis glanced over at the screens on the wall. “Now? Probably having to listen to Tidesong; then they let her eat with the other prisoners.”

Sharrow looked around the tall, shadowy spaces of the chamber. “And you were going to give all this to Brey, were you?”

“Yes,” Geis said. “Because she’s family, Sharrow. The way you’re family.”

“Right. And of course you’d never dream of doing anything horrid to me, would you?”

“Sharrow,” Geis said. “I’ve been trying to help you from the beginning; I have been helping you from the beginning. I tried to rescue you from this… monster, at his Keep.” Geis nodded at the man tied to the other seat. “It wasn’t my fault the Huhsz attacked at the same time. I’d no idea they were there.” Geis sounded bitter. “Some of my forces did get in and found this material here; they managed to retrieve it and bring it to me. Brave men died to rescue this collection, Sharrow. You shouldn’t make fun of it.”

“Geis,” she said, not looking at him, “you’ve had minutes to think up a better excuse than that. I’m disappointed.”

Geis closed his eyes for a moment. “You, whatever your name is,” he said wearily to Feril. “You must be capable of reason. Please try to talk some sense into my cousin.”

“I am afraid that as far as I understand them, I believe Lady Sharrow’s suspicions may well be justified, Count Geis,” Feril said regretfully.

“You fucking piece of junk,” Geis roared, shaking the chair he was tied to. “Untie me!”