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back her own scream as the realisation of her terrible mistake broke over her; she dropped her bundle and stared at Eofar and Isa, quaking, her big brown eyes stretched wide in terror.
    ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered.
    ‘Go,’ Isa hissed at her menacingly in Shadari, and Rahsa turned and fled down the corridor, leaving her bundle behind on the floor. Eofar heard the sound of her bare feet slapping against the hard stone.
     he fumed as Rahsa disappeared into the darkness.
    Isa stood up slowly. She compacted her emotions down into a dark brood and now she stood before him so still that she might have been a statue carved in ice. she told him coolly, And she turned and left him alone in the hallway.
    Her feelings were like blinding colours; a conversation with her always left him spent and disoriented. He wished she could have remained the little girl who had liked nothing better than to throw her skinny arms around his neck and rest her white head on his shoulder.
    He tapped the hard lump of the little bottle in his shirt pocket, and started back for his room.
    
    Striding down the corridor in front of his room came two of the garrison’s soldiers, dressed for duty in their embroidered tabards and white sun-proof cloaks, their broadswords sheathed across their backs.
     he asked impatiently.
    
     Eofar told him.
    
    Eofar paused with his hand on the curtain to his room. he said irritably.
    He felt Rho’s anger, but the soldier was too well-bred to answer back to the governor’s son. There had been a time when he thought he and Rho might become friends – but then Frea had taken him under her wing and into her bed, and by the time she dropped him, it was too late.
     Rho said to his companion, and Eofar watched them go, listening to the strike of their boots echoing down the featureless red rock hallways.
     he called out after a moment and ran to catch them up.
    Rho’s chill displeasure darkened to uneasiness.
     he asked sharply.
     said Rho.
    He would know, if anyone would
, Eofar thought. With apparently minimal effort and even less intent, Rho had learned to speak Shadari more fluently than anyone else in the garrison, including Eofar, who had lived there his whole life.
    Rho betrayed a little flicker of suspicion.
     Eofar looked at Rho and Daem in their immaculate uniforms and was suddenly painfully aware of his rumpled, damp shirt. He knew what the soldiers thought of him; the gossip that had circulated three months ago, after his father had given control of the garrison to Frea, even though he was the elder by nearly two years. He tried his best to ignore it; he had more important things to worry about.
    He left Rho and Daem and returned to his room, ducking his head automatically under the lintel of the doorway never meant for someone of his stature, climbed up to the dais, and sat down on the bed. He took the little bottle out of his pocket, tipped it