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feet to Khallayne and fell.
    Khallayne gestured toward the whimpering woman. “Surely another slave would suit your purpose as well as this one . . .”
    Eneg took a step toward her. The determination he saw in her face changed his mind. He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Take her. Send another from the kitchen.”
    Khallayne swept back down the low hallway without waiting to see if the woman would follow. No doubt the slave was eager to escape from the hot, fetid room.
    In the kitchen, Khallayne pointed at the first slave she saw, a young man no larger than Laie. “Lord Eneg requires your services.” She pointed back down the hallway and escaped into the passageway outside the kitchen.
    Laie came stumbling behind her, trembling with fear, stinking of Eneg’s playroom and blubbering her thanks for being saved.
    “Hush!” Khallayne said irritably, as the slave thanked her for the fifth time and tried to kiss her hand. Khallayne dipped her hand into the tiny pocket in the lining of her vest and produced a small coin. She held it out so that it was visible in the dim light, but pulled it back before it could be snatched by the slave’s eagerly outstretched fingers. “Do you know which apartments house the Keeper of History tonight?”
    Eyes fastened on the dull copper which Khallayne turned slowly in her fingers, the slave nodded. “No, Lady, but I can find out. A tray was sent up earlier.”
    Khallayne closed her fingers over the coin. “Then do so. But first, go to your quarters and wash, then meet me here. And quickly, or I’ll give you back to Eneg!”
    Tense and irritable, heart thudding with anticipation, Khallayne hovered in the shadows of a cavernous doorway until the slave returned.
    She was wearing a clean shift and her short, straw-colored hair was mostly combed. “The lady Keeper is staying in Lord Tenal’s guest apartments, Lady.” She curtseyed and thrust out her hand.
    With a smile, Khallayne put the copper coin into her palm without touching the slave’s grubby pink flesh. “Fetch a tray of food, whatever the Keeper prefers, from the kitchen.”
    The slave’s odd-colored blue eyes grew round and large with fear at the suggestion that she return to the kitchen.
    “If anyone asks, say Lord Teragrym has commanded it. And if Lord Eneg chooses you again, simply tell him you belong to me,” Khallayne told her. “Remind him I don’t want to have to train another slave.”
    Khallayne shook her head as Laie vanished. In the time it took an Ogre to mature from child to young woman, human slaves went from babies to old and useless. But no matter how old or young, they were worse than children. Slow and dumb and witless, even one supposedly as bright as Laie.
    Lyrralt was waiting for them at one of the side exits to the audience hall, leaning against the stone wall.
    “The Keeper’s in Tenal’s wing.”
    Lyrralt nodded, eyeing the slave who stood half-concealed behind Khallayne.
    Motioning for Laie to proceed, Khallayne and Lyrralt started along the passageway, nodding to other guests as they went. “What did you bring?” she asked.
    Lyrralt patted a pouch hanging from his belt, bowed once more to an older lady as she eyed the two of them curiously. “Crystals from Jyrbian’s collection.”
    Once they were upstairs, in the second-floor hall and away from the strolling party guests, they followed Laie until they rounded a corner and found her peeking around the corner at an intersection. “This is the hallway where the apartment is,” Laie whispered, pointing ahead. “There are guards.”
    Khallayne smiled, both at the roundness of the slave’s eyes and at the way Lyrralt’s arm tensed under her fingers.
    “Do we kill them?” he asked.
    “It’s all right. I expected them.” Feeling less calm than she allowed herself to show, she drew away from him and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and, as in the audience hall, the sounds and smells of her surroundings grew blurred