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Khanaphes, he reminded himself. The tunnels, the Masters, all that inexplicable misadventure that we shared there. The Empress, for the world’s sake! The Empress, who drinks the blood of slaves and is . . . He shuddered. The Empress, whom Che spoke of, just before it happened. I do not believe, I cannot believe, but even so . . . ‘Something unnatural has happened to her,’ he got out, the word ‘magic’ faltering on his tongue. ‘She has been . . . attacked in some way.’ His expression, if he could have seen it, was mutely appealing, begging the Dragonfly to fill in the gaps without him having to be too explicit.

The prince’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘Yes, she has,’ he admitted. ‘My seers have examined her, and they are . . . disturbed.’

‘Can you help? Or your . . . seers? Doctors . . . you must have doctors here, of any kind.’ There was an edge of desperation in Thalric’s voice that he could not prevent.

‘They say she has departed her body, and that she is now a ghost,’ Felipe Shah informed them.

Thalric felt Varmen shift beside him, his credulity strained to its limits. ‘A ghost . . .’ he managed. ‘But ghosts . . . I’ve never heard a ghost story where the person wasn’t . . . dead.’

‘Her body lives – for now. But her self has been cut from it, and cannot find its way back. Soon enough the body will die, and she will then be as you suggest.’

‘Help her,’ Thalric snapped. It sounded almost an order.

Instead of taking offence, Felipe lowered his gaze, considering. He gave a great sigh, as his shoulders sagged slightly. From behind him, the man Coren stepped forward.

‘My Prince, no. You know what the seers said, how this girl could pave the way for terrible things. Perhaps it would be best to let matters take their course.’

‘And if she is so terrible, will her ghost not be more terrible still?’ Felipe murmured. ‘There are enough ghosts clinging to me already, Coren, without adding one more. And she is Maker Stenwold’s niece, and there is a debt there.’ Abruptly he looked up again, meeting Thalric’s gaze. ‘My seers can do nothing, because they fear her, and their skills are of a different nature. To call her self back, you must find someone skilled in speaking to the ghosts of the fallen, for that is what she has become, whether her body still breathes or not.’

‘You are saying that you cannot help her, then,’ Thalric stated flatly.

‘I keep none about my court gifted at speaking with the dead,’ Felipe said softly. ‘I have no wish to hear such a clamour of voices, for there are too many I would recognize.’ His penetrating gaze fixed on the two Wasps, and Varmen shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Those who come to my door offering such services are turned away. Perhaps they do not go far. Coren,’ and his seneschal was at his elbow, ready for orders.

‘You know the woman I mean,’ Felipe instructed him. ‘Some tendays ago she came, and was refused entry. Unless you have grown slack, you will have a good idea of where she has gone.’

‘Peddling her trade about your villages, I think,’ Coren replied. ‘I was not sure . . . but you had never forbidden it.’

‘I would not deny to others whatever comfort the words of ghosts can bring,’ the prince told him philosophically. ‘Find the woman and bring her here.’

They had placed Che in another garden chamber, open to the sky, and also to the horizon on two sides. Seeing her laid out there, surrounded by spring flowers, Thalric felt a lurch of emotion inside of him. And they have sent for some kind of mystic undertaker. Is she . . .? He could see her breast rise and fall with shallow breathing, but death seemed to hang about her, as though only waiting for the right moment.

The idea of placing her fate – and my fate! – into the hands of some raddled old hag, some morbid chanting charlatan, disgusted him. Have they no doctors? Part of him railed at it, but experiencing the inexplicable had made inroads enough into his mind that he did not truly believe mere medicine would carry the day: not the herbs and poultices of Commonwealer healers, nor good Imperial surgery.

Varmen joined him later. The