"You can say what you like, Reepicheep. There are some things no man can face."

"It is, then, my good fortune not to be a man," replied Reepicheep with a very stiff bow.

-- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The death of one prince was a tragedy. The death of two, so close together and of the same plague, was nothing short of a calamity. Especially when no one else had caught the plague and none of the doctors could agree on what it was. For the second time in as many months the palace was plunged into mourning. Everyone went around -- in public at least -- with an air of deep grief. But there was worse still to come.

Within hours of the Second Prince's death being confirmed, the Fifth and Eighth Princes came down with fevers. On their chests were the same blotchy patches that had been found on their dead brothers' bodies.

The king took action. "All of the princes will be confined in their manors for at least a month. I want every doctor in the kingdom to examine the Second Prince's body. Anyone who can cure it will be rewarded with a noble title and lands."

General mayhem reigned through the imperial doctors' quarters. Harried-looking servants rushed back and forth carrying messages to different apothecaries all over Tiansheng, Gengxin's capital city, and even beyond. Magicians specialising in preservation spells were brought in to prevent the Second Prince's body decaying too much. A veritable flood of doctors, both real and pretend, swept into the palace. There were so many of them that the court physicians ran out of room in their laboratories. The kitchen staff complained loudly about having to feed so many extra people.

Mirio looked at the unfolding chaos and decided it was time to move further away from the main palace. He couldn't get a minute's peace with all this activity.

The Ninth Prince's Manor was the only one of the princes' palaces not off-limits to the rest of the palace. Zi Yao rarely left his home and even more rarely received visitors, so there was little chance of him taking ill. Mirio had not had any contact with the ill princes, so it was judged safe enough for him to temporarily move into the Ninth Prince's Manor and leave the Guest Palace for the doctors to convert into a miniature hospital.

I would have had more peace if I stayed home, he thought as his servants bustled around his new rooms and grumbled about the lack of space for all his clothes.

Zi Yao at least was happy about the new state of affairs. He dragged Mirio into his playroom and showed him all of his drawings.

"Look!" he exclaimed, holding up a sheet of paper covered with black and yellow stripes.

Mirio took a wild guess. "A bee?"

He must have guessed right because Zi Yao beamed. Next he picked up a sheet covered with orange and dots of black. Mirio studied it and couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"How nice," he said. "What is it?"

"Tiger!" Zi Yao made it sound as if Mirio was very silly for not knowing this.

After Zi Yao went to have his nap Mirio remarked, partly to himself, "I wish I knew how to deal with children."

For the past hour Lian sat in the corner of the playroom, apparently absorbed in a novel. It was very easy to forget he was there until he spoke. "You deal with him better than his tutors. They have no patience with him at all."

Once again Lian was wearing much nicer clothes than doctors normally wore -- a dark blue round-collared robe patterned with stars. Mirio had seen marquises attend court wearing less expensive materials. Just how much was his uncle paying Lian?

It seemed rude to ask, especially when Lian at least had the good taste to wear clothes that were expensive but not tacky. That showed he had better sense than many of the king's ministers, who turned up to social events looking like the victims of a tailor's practical joke.

"What do you think is wrong with my cousins?" Mirio asked instead.

Lian shrugged. "I haven't fully examined any of them, but my first diagnosis was..." He trailed off and looked mildly uncomfortable. "Well, I thought they had caught a disease from, shall we say, an intimate acquaintance."

"That was my thought too," Mirio said. "I'd believe it of Zi Xiao and Zi Guang[1]. But Zi Qin isn't old enough for that. He's only two thousand."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he remembered two thousand was not actually that young and someone of that age was in fact an adult. Lian's face suggested he was thinking along the same lines.

"Their later symptoms made me change my mind," Lian continued. "If the disease spread more widely I'd say it was malaria. The spots are what confuses me. I've heard of malaria causing jaundice but I've never heard of it giving people spots."

A few drops of rain landed on the courtyard outside. They came more and more frequently until the rain was pouring down. Mirio watched it fall while he continued to puzzle over the strange disease.

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"Could it be measles?" he asked.

"That was what the Crown Prince's doctor diagnosed. None of the treatments for measles worked." Lian was quiet for a minute. Then he said in a hushed voice, "I'm beginning to suspect a curse."

Mirio's first instinct was to laugh at that idea. He could understand someone cursing Zi Xiao. Maybe even Zi Guang or Zi Qing. But Zi Qin? What had he ever done to make anyone want to curse him? Most people outside the royal family didn't even know the Eighth Prince's name.

Then he remembered the sorry saga of Crown Prince Shao of Western Zhou, who cursed his father and brothers to get the throne. Instead he set off a civil war that ended with his own death and Western Zhou's destruction.

If there was a curse, the most likely suspect was one of the royal family. And it would end with far more deaths.

"I'll tell Uncle," Mirio said. "He'll know how to investigate this."

Lian pursed his lips. "That will just let the magician responsible know that they've been found out. What we need is someone skilled in tracing dark magic and breaking curses. I don't know anyone like that. Do you?"

Mirio thought for a while. There was only one person he knew who'd meddled enough in dark magic to recognise it quickly. Unfortunately she was more likely to accidentally make a curse worse than to break it. "I know someone who knows a lot about dark magic. We'll need someone else to break the curse."

Now how was he going to get Abihira's help when she was in Saoridhlém?

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Shizuki's new books kept him occupied for almost two hours. He curled up on a bench at the side of the pavement and started reading. He finished one book and got half-way through a second one before he got tired of this.

"What do you think's happening in there?" he asked, looking towards the palace.

Most of the servants, confused and annoyed, had lingered outside the gates for a while before deciding to take advantage of their unexpected time off work. The guards, who in Irímé's opinion had even less common sense than Abihira and made the reanimated mouse look intelligent, were hopelessly baffled at the situation and went to consult with the higher-ranked guards at the Silver Palace. None of them had come back yet. Perhaps they'd decided the best place to have the consultation was at their favourite bar. Now there were only Siarvin, Irímé and Shizuki still waiting.

They couldn't see anything happening in the palace grounds but they could hear some very alarming noises. Screaming, roaring, and now -- most frightening of all -- dead silence.

"I don't know," Irímé said in answer to Shizuki. To Siarvin he said, "Should we go and see?"

Siarvin looked at him as if he'd suggested jumping into shark-infested waters. "You can do what you like, but I'm staying out here until Abihira or Ilaran tells me it's safe."

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Abi waited. And waited. And waited. Ilaran still didn't come back. Eventually her patience ran out. She got up and slowly, painfully made her way out of the main hall. Once she was outside it was easier. All she had to do was spread her wings, flap them once, and nearly have a panic attack when she rocketed up to be on a level with the roof.

Funny. When inside the palace and in danger of death she'd had no problem flying. Now she had plenty of room, was perfectly safe -- from zombies at any rate -- and felt like she was about to fall and break her neck at any minute.

With considerable difficulty and several near-collisions with the palace walls Abi finally got the hang of flying. She flew over the roof and round the corner to land outside Ilaran's door. Landing was as much of a challenge as flying. She foolishly stopped flapping her wings and held them out straight, assuming she would glide down to the ground.

She didn't glide. She fell.

"Owwwww!"

Congratulations, part of her mind whispered snidely. Now you have a twisted ankle, a banged elbow, and a bruise on your face as well as the injuries you already had. Great job!

Abi ignored it. She got up, wincing as she put weight on her sore right ankle and her cut left leg. Forget seeing a doctor; at this rate she'd have to check herself into a hospital.

Nothing could have prepared her for the state of the building once she got inside. It looked like a herd of tiadurth[2] had rampaged through it. The wallpaper was clawed off the walls, the door was smashed, the furniture was battered at best and a pile of splinters at worst.

She stepped around a destroyed coat-stand and looked into the sitting room. Ilaran wasn't there. She went to the other side of the hallway and checked his bedroom.

At first she didn't see him. She knew he was there only because she could hear very faint sobbing coming from somewhere in the room.

"Ilaran?" she asked, pushing the door open more fully. It almost fell off its hinges when she touched it.

No answer. Abi peered into the darkened room for several minutes. She had to kneel down and look under the furniture before she finally spotted Ilaran. He was curled up under the bed, of all places.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He uncurled just long enough to glare at her. His eyes shone in the dark like a cat's. The sight unnerved Abi. She'd never seen his eyes do that before.

"I'm having a mental breakdown. What does it look like?"

...Right. Well. The events of the last day would take a toll on anyone's sanity. Abi felt rather like hiding somewhere and crying too.

The sewing kit was sitting on the bedside table. Abi snatched it and hobbled out, feeling very uncomfortable. She should probably do something to help Ilaran, but what? She wasn't a psychiatrist.

She sat down in the sitting room -- on the floor, since there was a good chance her wings might accidentally set a chair on fire -- and sewed up her trouser leg. By the time she finished that her ankle had stopped hurting. Ilaran still hadn't come out of his room.

Maybe Siarvin would know what to do about Ilaran. Time to fetch him and Irímé, then.

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"Let me get this straight. She saw a dug-up grave and thinks there's a grave-robber on the loose?"

Ordinarily Kitri would have thought this was a minor problem for the local constable to deal with. Ever since the fiasco of the walking corpses she'd become very alarmed by any hint of unusual goings-on in graveyards. When she got home and heard someone had reported a suspected grave-robber she decided to investigate herself.

It didn't really sound too bad at first. A farmer on her way home had seen a grave with a shovel lying beside it. She looked closer and realised the grave had been dug up and then filled in again. The constable scoffed at the idea of a grave-robber. That particular grave belonged to someone who had died over twenty years ago. All that would be left by this time was a skeleton, and grave-robbers preferred to harvest organs from the bodies of the recently-dead. Probably it was just the caretaker digging up some weeds.

There was only one thing that warned Kitri this was more serious than it sounded. The grave was in the graveyard Abi had raised on that memorable market-day.

"Have you opened the coffin?" she asked the constable.

He shook his head. "It'd be a waste of time."

"I'm not so sure. Get a shovel. We're going to check that grave."