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you are not a servant, nor a noble, and so may dine with neither."
    "I did not ask to be kept here, Chief Advisor."
    She flushed, cursing her traitorous reactions. "You have not given me your name."
    "You may call me Blade."
    Chiana lowered her eyes, unable to hold his gaze, and glanced at the slender hands at his sides. Beautiful hands, unsuited to a man, especially a killer. She suppressed a shiver. "I must return to the Queen."
    The assassin inclined his head, and she closed the door and walked away down the corridor. She frowned as she recalled her first, unnerving encounter with him in the audience room.
    Rarely did commoners request an audience with the Queen. Usually their grievances were aired through the lords who governed them, and nobles always applied for an audience in writing. Captain Redgard had informed her of this unusual application, and she had entered the audience chamber to find Blade standing amid a quartet of guards. She would never forget the way he had turned slowly to face her, and the shock of meeting his icy gaze. Her heart had jumped at the sight of him, her breath catching in her throat. Even after he had left, his effect on her lingered. When she had seen him again, battered by his encounter with the guards, she had experienced the same strange reaction in his presence.
    Chiana returned to her duties, striving to push his image from her mind.

 
     
    Chapter Three
     
    A tenday later, the message that Minna-Satu awaited arrived from the front. The soldiers had failed yet again, and King Shandor still lived. Captain Redgard brought the news himself, delivering it with a tinge of reproof in his tone. Minna kicked a cushion across the room, causing Shista to raise her head and look around.
    "Shall I select the next group of volunteers, My Queen?" the captain enquired without enthusiasm.
    "No. I shall send no more soldiers to perform this task."
    Redgard slumped. "As you wish."
    "It is not a mission suited to soldiers, Redgard. Do you not agree?"
    "As we have seen -"
    "Yes, yes. It is a task better suited to an assassin, is it not?"
    "Well..." The captain hesitated. "Perhaps, My Queen, but I doubt that an assassin would succeed either. The job is simply impossible."
    "No, not impossible. There is little that is truly impossible." Minna paced the floor. "For a man to flap his arms and fly, that is impossible. For a man to live beneath the sea, that is impossible. But to kill King Shandor... is possible, for an assassin."
    "Certainly they would be no great loss, and, being men of greed, they will flock to claim the reward..." He trailed off under Minna's glare, and she gestured.
    "You may go."
    The captain prostrated himself and retreated. Minna went to the window to gaze out at the sun-drenched gardens. Over the last tenday, she had glimpsed Blade twice in it, wandering amongst the flowers and shrubs, his black leather garb soaking up the light. His solitude told of sorrow and pain, and she sensed that death walked in his shadow, a hated ally at his side.
    She turned as Chiana entered. "Send for the assassin."
    The chief advisor retreated almost as quickly as the captain had done. Minna stared out of the window while she waited, her eyes following the winding silken banners that flew above the temple. The dream silk snapped and slithered in the breeze, its soft hiss underscoring the cheerful birdsong. Minna had never liked the dream silk. The invasion of her dreams by its sliding coils of bright cloth sometimes woke her in shivering distress, but she could rarely remember the unpleasant dreams it evoked.
    The church used the power of its silken dream disturbers to frighten the unfaithful into unwilling respectfulness, claiming the ability to madden those who did not worship Tinsharon. The long streamers of gushing, many-coloured silk rustled into peoples' dreams even on the stillest nights, when the hanging coils could fill a man with dread and rouse him screaming from his rest. She wondered if Blade