The soldiers conveyed their prisoners into a small upper chamber, near the Magistrate's Tower. It was called an "ambassadorial apartment" and looked pleasant enough, though in truth it was as inescapable as the prison had been. Fifteen-foot-thick stone walls, a ceiling of plastered metal plates, triple-barred windows above a fifty-foot drop, three separate iron-banded doors, guard towers watching the four comers of the structure-whatever ambassadors resided here were in truth political hostages.

That's what Gerrard, Tahngarth, and Karn had become- political hostages. Someone had made a deal, and they were the security on the deal. Still, this was a cleaner, warmer, more comfortable prison than below-furniture and books, clothes and beds and "Wine anyone?" asked a familiar voice.

As the soldiers filed out the triple doors, Takara made her way in, carrying a wooden crate. Her red hair seemed flame in the dark entryway, and her lips were equally red around a smile.

Gerrard gaped at her, astonished. "What are you doing here-why have they let you-what is all this-?"

"What is all this?" Takara echoed. She lugged the crate to a low table, set it down, and pulled on the top. Nails complained but were no match for her strength. The lid came away, revealing two dozen corked green bottles carefully packed in straw. "All this is wine."

Shaking his head in confusion, Gerrard approached. "No, I mean all of this? Why are they letting you in here-?"

"I made a deal, Gerrard," Takara replied, hefting a bottle and staring with admiration at it. "In Mercadia, deals are more powerful than armies. The deal I made brought you up out of the pit, sent Hanna, Orim, and Sisay off to get another piece of your Legacy-will even allow us to fix the ship and get out of here. You're still prisoners, of course, but part of the deal is visitation rights-and wine." Producing a corkscrew from her pocket, Takara yanked the cork from the first bottle. "Have some?"

Gerrard shrugged, taking the bottle in hand. "No wineglasses?"

"Don't get uppity," Takara replied, already working over a second bottle. "How about you, Tahngarth? I can't remember if minotaurs like this stuff-"

"Not in such piddling quantities," Tahngarth said, striding across the room to grasp the opened bottle. He smiled ruefully and took a long draw. "Gerrard will owe me a bottle from his case, when it arrives," he said dryly.

Takara laughed. "Then I'll owe you one, also." She lifted her own bottle. Only after a deep draught did she seem to notice Karn, standing like another piece of furniture near the window. "I don't imagine silver golems-"

"You are right," interrupted Karn, his voice a quiet rumble like distant thunder. "I require a different sort of… lubrication."

That brought laughter from everyone except the golem.

Gerrard smiled sadly and slouched into a low chair, his wine bottle hanging from his hand. He shook his head. "How did we ever end up here?"

Takara took a seat opposite him and drew a deep breath. "A dangerous question. I asked it often when I was a prisoner on Rath. The answer always came down to betrayal. I had been betrayed."

After a long swallow, Gerrard said, "Betrayal. Yes, that's awful stuff. Someone betrayed you into Volrath's hands, and then your father betrayed Sisay to get you back. It's the filthiest business-betrayal."

"It was my brother," Takara said, her eyes focused beyond the room. Embers smoldered in her gaze. "He betrayed me."

"Your brother? I didn't realize you had a brother."

"Ha! Of course you didn't," she said acidly. "I never talk of him. He wasn't really even my brother, only a usurping orphan. He was always jealous of me. He was always trying to steal what was mine. He betrayed me, cut me off from my father, destroyed my whole life, and sold me into slavery."

Shaking his head in compassionate outrage, Gerrard said, "That's horrible. You talk about your hatred, how it makes you strong. Now I see just how much reason you have to hate."

She stared directly at him, and her eyes were piercing, almost predatory. "So, how did you end up here? Betrayal?"

A speculative smile crossed Gerrard's face. "Well, there was that bastard Xcric-" he gently shook away the thought- "but, no. I'm through with blaming everyone else for my problems. I'm here because of my own failings, not someone else's."

Takara's look only intensified. "What failings?"

Gerrard laughed heavily, waving the question away. "You haven't time to hear all my failings." He took a long drink.

"Well, then tell me about the big one," Takara replied. "Tell me the first big mistake you made, the one that set up all the others."

"I don't know if there was just one."

"Oh, yes, there was. Every chain of misery has its first link, the one that binds you to all the others. What was it for you, Gerrard?"

He leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath and an even deeper draw, and said, "Of all the regrets I have, the deepest, the earliest, would be my father's death."

"Your father's death?" Takara said, seeming somewhat surprised and strangely angered. "What happened?"

"My brother-" Gerrard hissed- "gods, another wicked brother. He killed my father. He raised an army and marched on my father's village and killed my father and mother-the whole tribe."

Takara leaned forward, as if eager to hear the next bit. "Why?"

It was Gerrard's turn to stare into distant spaces. "He wanted to kill me. He killed the rest because he wanted to kill me… He tried to kill me. He hated me…"

Again, the single-word question. "Why?"

A bleary look was entering Gerrard's eyes, a sad muzziness that only thickened with his next drink. "Well, you see, I saved his life."

"You saved his life?"

"It was during his coming-of-age ceremony-a deadly climb up a nearby precipice. He was stuck, exhausted. He could go no farther. He was going to die. The tribe would have just let him die, but I wouldn't. I climbed up and carried him down. I saved his life."

"And for this, he hated you?"

"Well, yes, because in saving his life, I disrupted his coming-of-age ceremony. He could never be considered a full man from then on. He could never inherit the sidar's rule."

Takara's brow lowered. "Because of what you did, your brother could not inherit your father's kingdom? He could not ever rule?"

"Yes," Gerrard admitted heavily.

Sitting back in her chair, Takara took a drink, though her gaze remained on Gerrard. "I can understand his anger.

You stole his future. Whether you meant to or not, you took his inheritance."

"Yes, but after that, he came to take it back-no, not even to take it back, to destroy it so no one could have it. He murdered our father and burned the village. He took my Legacywhich was never his-and scattered it to the four winds. He joined the Phyrexians. He became Volrath-"

"Your brother… became Volrath?"

"Yes."

"And all because of you. Do you see what I mean?" Takara asked. "What you did to your brother led inexorably to your father's death and the village's destruction, to the scattering of your Legacy-even to my imprisonment in Rath, and Sisay's imprisonment in Rath, and the deaths of all those people who journeyed with you to Rath to save her. Do you see? The first link in a chain of misery. And it is a deep link, Gerrard. A deep, unbreakable link. Betrayal."

"That's enough," Karn rumbled from the window where he stood. "You weren't there, Takara. I was. You don't know what Vuel was like."

"No, Karn," Gerrard said, blinking in dread. "She's right. That's when it all began. All the misery started with that first betrayal."

With slow relish, Takara downed the dregs of her wine. She brought the bottle away from her lips. Wine hung bloodlike across them. A smile spread beneath the red liquid. "I told you, Gerrard, it was a dangerous question. Still, when you're locked away in a small room and there's wine aplenty, what other diversions are there than dangerous questions?"