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“Safnian.” She had the knife now, and securing her grip on it, she sat up. “You’re a prisoner?”

“I was,” Lo Videicho said. “Now, I do not know. They bricked in the way out. I told them they should kill me, but they did not.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You told it to my friend the music man, before they took him away.”

Leoff.

“They took him away?”

“Oh, yes. Your visit was quite upsetting, I think. They took him off.”

“Where to?”

“Oh, I know. You think I did not know? I know.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Alis said. “But I would like to know, as well.”

“I have lost my mind, you understand,” Lo Videicho confided.

“You sound fine to me,” Alis lied.

“No, no, it’s quite true. I am mad. But I think I should wait until we are out of these dungeons before I tell you where our friend was taken.”

Alis began feeling around for a wall. She found one and put her back to it.

“I don’t know the way out,” she said.

“No, but you know the way in.”

“The way in is—you mean the way into here, don’t you?”

“Yes, sly one,” Lo Videicho said. “You fell down it.”

“Then if you know that, why don’t you just leave? Why do you need me?”

“I would never leave a lady,” the man said. “But more than that…” She heard a metallic rattling.

“Oh. You can’t leave. You’re in a cell.” She must have fallen into an anteroom rather than the cell itself.

“It’s a palace, my palace,” Lo Videicho said. “But the doors are all locked. Do you have a key?”

“I might be able to get you out. We might come to some agreement. But first you must tell me why you are here.”

“Why am I here? Because the saints are filthy bastards, every one. Because they favor the wicked and bring grief to the kind.”

“That’s probably true,” Alis acknowledged, “but I’d still like a more specific answer.”

“I am here because I loved a woman,” he said. “I am here because my heart was torn out, and this is the grave they put me in.”

“What woman?”

His voice changed. “Beautiful, gentle, kind. She is dead. I saw her finger.”

A little chill went up Alis’ spine.

Safnian. There had been a Safnian engaged to the princess Lesbeth. She had gone missing, and word was that she had been betrayed by her fiancé. She remembered William mumbling his name in his sleep; it almost seemed he had been apologizing to him.

“Are you…are you Prince Cheiso?”

“Ah!” the man gasped. There was a pause, and then she heard a quiet sound she thought might be weeping.

“You are Cheiso, who was betrothed to Lesbeth Dare.”

The snuffling grew louder, but now it sounded more like laughter. “That was my name,” he said. “Before, before. Yes, how clever. Clever.”

“I heard you had been tortured to death.”

“He wanted me alive,” Cheiso said. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why. Or maybe he forgot, that’s all.”

Alis closed her eyes, trying to adjust her thinking, add the Safnian prince to her plans. Did he command troops? But they would have to sail here, wouldn’t they? A long way.

But he would surely be useful.

Cheiso shrieked suddenly, a throat-tearing howl of rage that hardly sounded human. She heard a meaty thud and guessed that he was throwing himself against the walls even as he continued to scream in his own language. She realized she was gripping the knife so hard that her fingers were numb.

After a time his shrieks subsided into full-belly sobbing. On impulse, Alis took her hand from the knife and felt her way through the darkness until she encountered the iron bars of his cell.

“Come here,” she said. “Come here.”

He might kill her, but death was so near, she had begun to lose respect for it. If a moment’s kindness was what sent her from the lands of fate, then so be it.

She could feel him hesitate, but then she heard a sliding sound, and a moment later a hand brushed hers. She gripped it, and tears started in her eyes at the contact. It felt like years since anyone had held her. She felt his hand tremble; the palm was smooth and soft, the palm of a prince.

“I am less than a man,” he gasped. “I am much less.”

Alis’ heart gripped; she tried to disengage her