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rip out his throat.
    He hoped he could defend himself. He knew very well that Eleanor could not.
    Any men Reynell hired would be men of this world, unused as Simon was to fighting women and likely to underestimate Joan. She could accompany Ellie too in places where Simon couldn’t go.
    If the gods had sent him a problem, they’d also sent him a tool. He’d be damned indeed if he wouldn’t use it.
    ***
    Eleanor almost crept through the library door, stopping as soon as she was far enough inside for it to close and clasping her hands behind her back. She looked up at Simon uncertainly, the same way she seemed to do everything these days. “You wanted to see me, Simon?”
    “I did,” he said, and put a hand gently on her shoulder, guiding her to a chair. “Sit down first. I’ve rung for tea already.”
    She sat obediently. Never a big girl to begin with, she looked childlike now. Her eyes were huge, bright blue above bruised-looking half circles. The mass of her braided and coiled hair overwhelmed her face, and her pallor was downright ghastly against her black dress. The chair itself seemed to devour her.
    Joan was thinner, Simon thought. But nobody would ever mistake her for a child or think her fragile. Even drenched and near starving, she’d had more life about her. And if she can give Eleanor some of that , he thought suddenly, I don’t care how if Ellie learns to throw knives and skin deer into the bargain.
    “I heard that there were bandits,” Eleanor said, surprising him. She almost never spoke on her own initiative these days. “Are you all right? I’d worried.”
    “In excellent health. Thank you.”
    She managed a weak smile.
    They’d never really talked, growing up. Simon had gone off to school just as Ellie had started to walk. Now his memories of her were like a gallery of portraits, each one only a moment in time: the laughing child with flyaway curls, the awkward and anxiously mannered twelve-year-old in black school dress and pinafore, the shy young lady with an armful of books. From the time he’d taken over her guardianship, they’d been amiable strangers, but they’d done all right together until April.
    Now Simon felt as if he was groping in the dark, breaking fragile heirlooms in a clumsy search for a light that might not even exist.
    “You must’ve heard, then,” he said, “that we have a guest.”
    “Miss MacArthur, they said. She’s amnesiac?”
    “That’s the story I want to give out.”
    “What do you mean?” Eleanor sat forward a little, an encouraging sign.
    “You’ve heard of other worlds?”
    Eleanor blinked. “She’s from one?”
    Simon nodded. “Human and all that,” he added hastily, lest Ellie think of the spirit that Reynell had stuffed into her. “Just foreign, you know. Very foreign.”
    “How strange.” She tilted her head birdlike. The familiar pose gave Simon hope. Ellie had always been a curious girl. Perhaps Joan would be novel enough to draw her out.
    “Very,” he said, “and she needs our help. Yours most particularly.”
    “Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “I’d be glad to be helpful, of course, but what can I do?”
    “You’re an accomplished young lady, Ellie. If I needed to learn manners, I’d apply to you. Perhaps I should, in fact.” He winked, hoping for a laugh, and contented himself when he got another faint smile.
    “Oh. I-I see.”
    “Would you be willing to help her along? I think she’ll learn quickly enough if she has someone to help and to conceal mistakes when she makes them.”
    “I’ll be glad to,” Ellie said. And then, in a quick, nervous rush, “It’ll be nice to have another girl around.”
    The word was startling in context. He pictured a girl as a curly-headed tot or a slim young lady in pastels with flowers in her hair, not the bloodstained figure in the stone circle. “She’s somewhat older than you,” Simon said, “my age or close, and she’s quite…rugged.”
    “I’m sure I’ll find her