"Oh, no," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. "Not that. That's meddling with things you don't understand."

"Well, we are wizards," said Ridcully. "We're supposed to meddle with things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood things we'd never get anything done."

-- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Few things could make a person feel smaller than facing an older and -- generally -- respected relative who was disappointed in them. That feeling only increased tenfold when the older and generally respected relative was the empress, could have them thrown in the dungeon with the wave of her hand, and had good reason to be both disappointed and angry with them.

"You have no need for lengthy explanations or excuses," Raivíth said grimly. "I think the facts speak for themselves. There's only one thing I want to know." She stared Abi in the eye until Abi felt as insignificant as a speck of dust. "Why in the name of all that's holy did you decide to become a necromancer?"

She had many reasons. She'd already told Irímé and Kitri the most convincing ones. They suddenly seemed very unconvincing now she thought of telling her grandmother.

"I think it's a useful skill," she said. She was embarrassed to hear how her voice quavered. "You know Grandfather's always telling us to learn as many skills as possible in case we need them."

Raivíth closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. There was a brief pause that suggested she was silently counting to ten. "Your grandfather meant skills like cooking, sword fighting, and first aid. Not dark magic. Certainly not meddling with things only the gods can understand. Shall I ask him to come and hear how badly you misinterpreted his advice?"

Abi winced. Emperor Consort Ninuath was normally calm and even-tempered, but the entire royal family lived in fear of the times when he did lose his temper. Time to try another tactic.

"I've already raised the dead and nothing bad has happened." That was technically true if you limited the definition of 'bad' to mean exclusively 'they attacked or killed someone'. Disrupting a festival was what most people would consider bad, but no one had actually been hurt. So Abi decided to disregard that incident entirely. "Irímé can confirm it."

Irímé gave her a horrified look. She mouthed the word "mouse" at him. Thank goodness he got the point.

"She raised a mouse from the dead, your Majesty," he said, very politely and as if they were having an amiable chat over cups of tea.

Raivíth eyed him sourly. "She raised more than that, I think. I thought that story of yours was threadbare. Now I see you were trying to protect her. Tell me, Rilluintiar, what made you think inviting a corpse to the festival was a good idea?"

It was never a good sign when relatives started using your kelros-name[1]. It was an even worse sign when they made it sound like an especially vile insult.

Sometimes Abi had to wonder if parents and grandparents developed a sixth sense for when a child or adolescent was doing something they disapproved of, and a seventh sense for knowing exactly what it was. Her foster parents had an amazing ability to summon her or send her off somewhere just when she wanted to do some research into less-than-legal magic. Her biological parents had spent the last month distracting her with things to do with the wedding when she was so close to successfully performing necromancy. And now her grandmother not only knew what she'd done, but she knew last night was her fault. It was uncanny.

"I made a mistake," she said. In an attempt to get the conversation back in the direction she wanted it to go she added, "But everyone saw it didn't attack them! It's perfectly safe."

Raivíth sniffed. "You and I have very different definitions of 'perfectly safe'. If you were any older I would have you arrested for dark magic." She glared at Irímé. "And you too, as an accomplice and for lying to me."

All the colour drained from Irímé's face. It was quite a feat when he was already pale to begin with.

"However," Raivíth continued in a less severe tone, "you are both very young. I'm willing to put this down to youthful foolishness and turn a blind eye -- this time. You must both promise you will never meddle with necromancy again."

Well, no harm in promising. Abi could find any number of loopholes in just about any promise if she tried hard enough. "I promise."

"I promise," Irímé mumbled.

Raivíth eyed them both suspiciously. "I will keep a very close eye on both of you to make sure you keep your promise. And I am going to tell your parents all about this."

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Oh no, Abi thought. She turned as pale as Irímé. Mother will never let me out of her sight again.

"Now, onto the other matter." At first Abi couldn't imagine what she was talking about. "Attacking an unarmed person without warning is illegal, no matter what they've done." Oh. This was about Haliran. "You will pay the full fine of forty-four thousand wían[2] to the victim's family."

Abi looked up sharply. "But I haven't got forty-four thousand wían!"

"I know. Your parents will pay a quarter of the fine now. You will pay the rest when you come of age, and you will also repay that quarter to your parents."

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Two very dejected people left the Silver Palace that evening. From the looks on both their faces anyone would have thought they'd been condemned to immediate execution, instead of essentially being let off with a slap on the wrist.

Abi sighed. "I suppose there's no getting out of it then."

Thank the gods, Irímé thought. She's given up necromancy.

Her next words shattered that blissful illusion. "I'll have to find a way to make money as soon as possible. You write a bit, Irímé. Do you think I could become an author?"

Irímé blinked, taken aback by this unexpected question. "I don't know," he said dubiously. "Do you want to write?"

"Not really. But it's a quick way to make money, isn't it?"

Only someone who had never started a story in their life would say something so ignorant. All his life Irímé had been tormented by the incurable urge to write. It was a very inconvenient gift for anyone to have. Writing required a strange mixture of solitude and support, a great deal of motivation, and preferably an audience. Irímé had solitude, all right. But he had no support, little motivation, and no audience. He had occasionally looked into publishing. What he learnt about the process was enough to dissuade anyone from ever trying to get their writing published.

"It takes years of practice just to write anything worth reading," he said bluntly. "Even longer to find a publisher who'll accept it. Then you have to wait for people to read it, which they probably won't. And the whole thing's completely useless if you aren't meant to write."

Abi looked blank, as all non-writers did when writers attempted to explain this to them. Irímé sighed and gave up.

"I'd offer you some of my money, but I only have a small allowance from my father's will. And a hundred wían a year from my mother. When she remembers, and when she thinks I need it." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice at that last part.

Abi shook her head. "It's my debt, so I'll have to pay it off. Besides, I have the higher rank. I'm supposed to support you, not the other way round[3]."

They walked on in gloomy silence for a while until Abi stopped abruptly.

"I know! I can make money with necromancy!"

Oh no. Surely not. He must have misheard. Surely she hadn't just said... "What?"

"With a little more practice I can communicate with the dead. Then when people want to speak to their dead relatives--"

Irímé interrupted her. "So in other words you want to become a ghost-speaker like those fairground charlatans."

Abi pouted. "Not exactly like that. They make up whatever they think their audience wants to hear. I'll tell them what the dead are actually saying."

No one would ever know how much effort it took Irímé not to slap her in the vain hope it would knock some sense into her. "You just promised you'd never meddle in necromancy again!"

"Define 'meddle'."

Oh, for the love of-- He could try to reason with her. He could say yet again how necromancy was a terrible idea. But what was the point when she wouldn't listen? Irímé pushed past her and stalked on ahead. "I've had enough. I'm going to find someone sane to talk to. Let me know when you've come back to your senses."

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After the shock of the trial's dramatic ending it took a long time for everyone to recover. Alcohol helped. So did Shizuki's not strictly accurate but very amusing re-enactment of the look on Haliran's face when she was thrown to the floor. Within a few hours Siarvin and Ilaran were having a much more normal conversation over drinks. Shizuki lit the fire in spite of the weather, and he and Koyuki found one thing they definitely had in common: a love of sleeping in front of a roaring fire. Snake spirits. Ilaran would never understand them.

The sitting room was painfully stifling with that fire blazing in the hearth. Siarvin and Ilaran took refuge in the much cooler kitchen. Their conversation turned to leaving Eldrin and going back to Tananerl. Ilaran found it harder to concentrate than he expected. His thoughts kept returning to Abihira's display in the courtroom. And from there they went to the corpse shut in the crypt.

"What's wrong?" Siarvin asked after Ilaran was silent for an unusually long time.

"I was thinking about the corpse."

Siarvin's puzzled expression showed he hadn't heard about that yet. Ilaran explained the situation briefly. Siarvin looked horrified by the end.

"You mean there's a walking corpse less than a mile away? And its creator can't even control it?"

Ilaran thought again of Haliran thrown around the room. Like Irímé a few hours before he considered the sheer magical power -- and control over it -- needed for such a feat. "I think she can control it. The problem is she just doesn't know how."

Siarvin shuddered. "That makes it worse." Ilaran gave him a questioning look. He elaborated, "Based on what you've just told me we have a necromancer in the city. In our neighbourhood, no less. She can raise the dead and call them to her from a completely different part of the city. And she doesn't even know how she did it or how to control what she calls up. Can't you see how her experiments can go horribly wrong?"

Ilaran thought about it. He promptly wished he hadn't. "Well, what are we to do about it? I don't think she'll give up necromancy because we ask nicely. She's obsessed with it. Besides," he remembered the ghosts in Haliran's house, "a necromancer could be very useful in some situations."

He'd never known Siarvin was capable of such an icy frown. "You sound just like your father. A starving vampire could be useful in some situations, but I still wouldn't want to live near one. Mainly because I wouldn't live very long."