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had not deserved to end up like this.
    "What was it?" she asked, uncomfortably aware of Golophin's hawk-like scrutiny.
    "A shell. One of our own, God help us, in the moment when the battle was won. I was able to seal the stumps, but I had already exhausted myself in the fighting and could do nothing more. It would take a great work of theurgy to heal him completely, something I'm not sure I would be capable of even if I were at my full strength. And so he lies here, his mind in some fathomless limbo I cannot reach. We have made discreet enquiries for Mindrhymers, but those who were not murdered under Sastro di Carrera's regime fled to the ends of the earth. The Dweomer cannot help Abeleyn. His own will must pull him through, and whatever human warmth we can give." Here he glared at Isolla as if he dared her to contradict him.
    But she was not so easily cowed. She released the unconscious King's hand and faced the old mage squarely. "I take it there will be no wedding until the King is brought to himself again."
    "Yes. But there will be a wedding. The country needs it. We may have slaughtered Carrera's retainers and expelled the surviving Knights Militant, but there are still ambitious men in Hebrion who would stoop to seize a crown if they saw it fall."
    "You cannot fool the world for ever, Golophin. The truth will out, in the end."
    "I know. But we have to try. This man has greatness in him. I will not abandon him to rot!"
    He loves him, she thought. He truly does. And she warmed to the fierce old man. She had always responded to lost causes, had always sided with the underdog. Perhaps because it was how she had always seen herself.
    "So you brought me here to join your little conspiracy. Who else knows the true condition of the King?"
    "Admiral Rovero, General Mercado, and perhaps three or four of the palace servants whom I trust."
    "The whole city is in mourning."
    "I had to put out a bulletin on the King's health. He is dangerously ill, but not dying. That is the official line."
    "How long do you think you can keep the hounds leashed?"
    "A few weeks, maybe a couple of months. Rovero and Mercado have the army and the fleet firmly under control, and in any case Hebrion's soldiers and sailors fairly worship Abeleyn. No, as always, it is the court we must worry about. And that, my dear, is where you come in."
    "I see. So I am to make reassuring noises about the palace."
    "Yes. Are you willing?"
    She looked down at the wrecked King again, and felt an absurd urge to ruffle the dark hair on the pillow. "I am willing. My brother would wish it so anyway."
    "Good. I did not read your character wrong."
    "If you had, Golophin, what would have become of me?"
    The old man grinned wolfishly. "This palace would have become your prison."
     
     
    F OR THE LADY Jemilla, the palace had indeed come to seem like a prison. Ever since the retaking of the city she had been shepherded and watched and guarded like some prisoner of war. And she had not seen Abeleyn once in all that time. That old devil Golophin was always there to put her off. The King was too ill to see anyone but his senior ministers, he said. But the rumours were running like wildfire about the palace: that Abeleyn was dead and already buried, that he was too horribly scarred to see the light of day, that his injuries had turned him into an imbecile. In any case, the triumvirate of Rovero, Mercado and Golophin - always Golophin - were running Abrusio as though they wore crowns themselves. It galled her beyond measure that she, who bore the King's heir, should be put off and shuffled about as though she were some troublesome trull whose swelling belly could be ignored. And then, worst of all, the Princess of Astarac had arrived with due state to be married to the father of Jemilla's child. Or to the man everyone thought was the father, it made no odds - not now.
    Things were slipping through her grasp with every passing day. This wedding must not happen. Her child must be