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haunches before the girl, concentrating on her, trying to set his awareness of Noah, and his enmity of Weyland, to one side.
    She still had her face partly averted towards her father, but Jack could now see her far more clearly. His initial impression that she looked like Cornelia was wrong. Her dark hair—worn in a cap of short, loose curls—was her mother’s, as were her dark blue eyes and pale skin, but her strong, angular bone structure, and the very look of her face, was all Weyland. Now that he was closer, Jack could see that although she wore the form of a young girl, teetering on the brink of womanhood, faint lines about her eyes and mouth bespoke years (hundreds of years) of torment.
    He looked at her wrists, and had to use all the selfcontrol he’d learned over all his lives not to flinch back in horror.
    Glowing red lines cut so deep into her wrists that, as they writhed and twisted back and forth, Jack could see glimpses of bone. Intuitively he understood that Grace felt every particle of pain that such injury caused, but that once the fiery bracelets faded then her wrists would be left with nothing but faint scars.
    Catling’s intent was to cause agony, and to do it in such a manner that she could revisit the agony time after time.
    “Grace…” he said, unable for the moment to come to grips with the enormity of Catling’s cruelty.
    She finally turned her face directly to him. “Do not pity me,” she said.
    “I am not pitying you,” Jack said, holding the girl’s eyes. “I am admiring you. Tell me, is there anything I can do to help?”
    “Oh, Jack,” Noah said, and there was a world of hurt and need and pain in those two short words.
    “It’s all we want of you, Jack,” Weyland said. “To damn well help her.”
    “You want me to help your daughter,” Jack said, “after all you have taken from me?”
    “Jack—” Noah said.
    “Hate me all you want,” Weyland said, “but spare my daughter. Jack, please, she needs your help.”
    Jack wondered what it must have cost Weyland to ask him for help. He stared at Weyland, all the illfeeling he felt for the man burning in his eyes, but was prevented from speaking further by Grace.
    “No one can help,” Grace ground out as Jack looked back at her.
    “Is it like this always?” Jack said, making a small gesture to her wrists.
    “No,” Weyland replied. “Catling can leave heralone for weeks and months on end. Then, when Catling needs to make a point, remind us all of her power, she…” He couldn’t finish.
    Jack didn’t need Weyland to finish in order to understand. Catling was using Grace to punish everyone who she thought stood in the way of her completion. She would tease, making people think that perhaps she’d relented, and then, just as everyone was crawling back towards a state resembling happiness, Grace would again be dragged into such torment that peace of mind and contentment flew out the door.
    He realised that his initial impression of disinterest in Grace was very wrong. Everyone here was tormented by Grace’s agony.
    “I am very sorry that my arrival has caused this,” Jack said to Grace. He reached out a hand, thinking to lay it on one of her upper arms, but she flinched away from him, and Jack let his hand drop back to his side.
    He stood up. “When the fire has faded,” he said to Noah and Weyland, “then I’ll examine Catling’s hex. Maybe I can help, maybe not, but it won’t hurt to look.”
    Noah’s face relaxed in relief. “Thank you, Jack.”
    There was another one of those tense, awkward silences. Jack wanted to look away from Noah, but couldn’t, and hated that weakness. He knew Weyland was staring at him, everyone was staring at him, but he just couldn’t tear his eyes away from Noah.
    In her turn, Noah was regarding him with unusual intensity. He could see words forming in her mind, and then being discarded as useless for the occasion.
    “Why,” Jack said very softly, “have we always found it