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freshly forked hay.
    Single-minded. He, too, had to be single-minded.
    Arlen shut out the cold and his fears and the dark shout of denial buried deep within him, and focused himself on his own goals. Reach Amses. Pull every bit of rank and influence to jump the travel booth line.
    Get home to Anfeald and— For good or bad, find out what the silence meant.
    "Arlen's rooms," Carey snapped, to no one in particular—and to everyone. Jess, Cesna, Jaime . . . all caught in a stasis of stunned reaction. Carey wished he felt the same, instead of this grim, overwhelming and familiar weight that settled on his shoulders. Make it happen . Whatever it was, make it happen. Fix something, deliver something, save something . . . no giving up, no matter what. Arlen would be depending on him. Carey didn't waste any more time, not in thought or regret or even consideration. "Go there. Now . Have someone else put that gelding up, Jess, and don't say anything about this. Jaime, can you make it on your own?"
    Jaime struggled to respond, her throat bobbing; she swallowed hard and then the words burst out of her.
    "Hell, yes! I need to know what Cesna's talking about. Get her up there and sedate her into a zombie if you have to, but I need to know ."
    "Sedation might not be such a bad idea at that," Carey muttered, climbing to his feet and, by dint of his grip on Cesna's arms, bringing her up with him. Hauling her up. "Pull it together, Cesna. There's more to this than spilling a few words—because if what you're saying is true, losing the Council won't be the end of it."
    If what she was saying was true. As overwrought as she was . . .
    Maybe she was wrong.
    He saw the same thought reflected on Jaime's face as she grabbed Cesna from the other side, and between the two of them they kept her on her feet between the indoor ring and the tunnel-like rear entrance of the hold itself. Carey took them up a back way, one that was spelled to stay locked for anyone besides Arlen, Carey, and—recently—Natt. Testament to her mindset, Jaime didn't question Carey about it, not when they took the first turn she probably hadn't even known was there, not when they spilled out of a stairway into Arlen's workroom.
    He'd broken all the rules to show it to either of them—but Cesna would hardly remember, Jaime could be trusted, and it was far better than revealing Cesna's state to everyone they passed. Far better than starting a panic until he could confirm what had happened . . . and what they needed to do next.
    He deposited Cesna on the stool in Arlen's workroom and glanced at Jaime— stay with her —and even as he strode from the room he heard her low, urgent voice. " Who's dead, Cesna—and how ?"
    He found Natt standing by the side of a long, box-topped desk in the corner of the apprentices' room—the dispatch desk. A grey-haired woman sat at the desk itself, her hands moving reflexively as she sorted messages still visible only in her mind. Some she'd transported, printed in the hand of the sender and on the original paper; half of those were on thick red-bordered confidential sheets, and the printing wouldn't show until the right person touched them. Auntie Pib, her name was, and she'd come to know Carey very well during the time Jess was at Kymmet—and he, her. Well enough to spot immediately that her normally chocolate skin bore an undertone of grey, and the habitual, ever-present tremble of her hands had worsened considerably.
    Natt—a chunky, round-faced man given to understated sartorial finery—turned to Carey with the gravest of expressions. "She's overloaded," he murmured. "We need to get relief here, and keep them on short rotating shifts."
    "Can you call someone?" Carey asked. With Arlen, it would have been a given; he'd handed out summons rings—like Carey's courier ring—to his crucial hold service people.
    "Yes," Natt said, embarrassment spreading over his face. "It didn't even occur—"
    "Do it," Carey said abruptly, and Natt