...we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. -- Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

Life in Saoridhlém in general was proverbially exciting. Life in the capital was naturally said to be even more so. Many a youngster on Muirus 9436 who had never even left their home planet dreamt eagerly of the day they could travel to Vanerth. Saoridhlém was the most popular setting for novels. Almost every serialised story took its main characters to the glittery, glamourous city of Eldrin.

Kitri had always known the fictionalised version of the city featured in those books was as different from reality as chalk was from cheese. True, she wasn't originally from the city. But she knew it well enough to find the novels highly amusing. She had gone to school in Eldrin, after all. The city was only glittery on festival days. And it would be hard to imagine a less glamourous place than anywhere frequented by university students during term-time -- especially exam-time. There was nothing glamourous about wan, harried figures hunched over their textbooks in all sorts of strange places.

Her latest visit to the city was by far the worst. If life in Eldrin was this exciting, she would happily be bored for the rest of her life. Sea serpents! Walking corpses! Her childhood friend being publicly revealed as a necromancer!

Speaking of that childhood friend -- who Kitri sometimes wished she had never met or even heard of -- she had mysteriously disappeared. A few rumours said she'd gone back to the palace. They were followed by claims she was thrown in the dungeon alongside the creature she'd justifiably attacked. (Kitri flatly refused to refer to a piece of trash like Haliran as a person. Frankly Abihira's actions at the end of the trial were the most defensible actions she'd taken recently.) Be that as it may, Kitri dismissed those rumours as nonsense. Abi would never go back to the palace after what had just happened. Even if she did, the empress would never throw her in prison for it.

A handful of other rumours said she had packed up and run away. That didn't make much sense either. Where would she run to? Still others -- spread exclusively by people who had not been present in the courtroom -- claimed she had spontaneously disappeared after attacking Haliran.

In short no one knew where Abi was. Kitri, however, could make an educated guess.

After the drama at the royal court she set off for her hotel room. She urgently needed a cup of tea before she could bear any more insanity.

On the way out of the palace she bumped into Princess Kiriyuki. At first Kitri didn't recognise her. The princess looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

She should be used to Abi's special brand of chaos by now, Kitri thought. Even so, she stopped to try to reassure the princess. No one knew better than her how shocking Abi's antics could be even when you expected them. The incident of the walking dead in the market would forever haunt her memory.

"Don't worry, your Highness," she said politely. Perhaps it was a breach of protocol to approach a foreign royal so casually and without a formal introduction. But Kitri was used to dealing with all sorts of royals and those who claimed to be royal. It only occurred to her afterwards that she might have broken some rule. "Abihira can wriggle out of anything. She won't be in serious trouble for long."

Silently she added, More's the pity.

Kiriyuki made an attempt to look more cheerful. It was a very poor attempt when she still looked pallid and shaken. Kitri politely didn't point that out.

"I'm not worried about her," Kiriyuki said. "I just need a drink."

Who doesn't? Kitri thought. "Would you care to join me for a cup of tea?"

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How had an invitation to have tea turned into a raid on the hotel's bar? Kitri didn't know. She also didn't care enough to figure it out. Especially not when her head was swimming and the table moved around far more than any inanimate object should.

Kiriyuki wasn't in a much better state. After the first two bottles of jarage[1] she began to complain about her uncle. Most of what she said was in Seroyawan with only a few words of barely-comprehensible Saoridhin. Kitri understood only that Kiriyuki's uncle was terrifying. She could sympathise; she had a few terrifying older relatives herself. She started to tell Kiriyuki about her horrifying Aunt Nuashil. After the fourth bottle her story trailed off into gibberish. Half-way through the fifth bottle Kitri fell asleep at the table.

Icy water crashed down on her head. Kitri awoke with a screech. She flailed her arms and legs, instinctively trying to swim, and only succeeded in knocking over the table. Kiriyuki sat bolt upright. She grabbed the closest thing to hand to defend herself. Unfortunately it was a cushion from the chair beside her. Kiriyuki, still not fully awake or quite sober, stared blankly at it as if she'd never seen a cushion before.

Kitri's soaked hair clung to her face like a determined octopus. She pushed it out of the way, rubbed her eyes until she stopped seeing two Kiriyukis holding two cushions, and took stock of the situation. Her eyes narrowed. She turned around slowly with her fiercest glare. hoping to put the fear of the gods into the prankster responsible. Probably it was some other patron of the hotel bar who'd also overindulged in their strongest drinks. What a pity that they, unlike Kitri and Kiriyuki, were the sort of person who'd do stupid things instead of just going to sleep after too much to drink.

At first she saw no one behind her at all. Kitri blinked and rubbed her eyes again. Then someone poked their head out from behind the settee a short distance away. For a minute Kitri thought she was still dreaming. There were plenty of people she'd expect to play a joke like that. This wasn't one of them.

"Irímé?"

If it was Arafaren she would have expected it. If it was Abihira she wouldn't have been a bit surprised. But Irímé! What was the world coming to?

Kitri shook her head sadly. He's spent too long around Abi. She's rubbed off on him.

"I'm sorry," Irímé said. "I tried to wake you, but you were too drunk. So I had to get a bucket of water."

Kitri spluttered indignantly. "I was not drunk! I was just tired."

Behind her Kiriyuki had gone back to sleep. She snored peacefully, oblivious to everything around her. Unlike Kitri she had been lucky enough not to get drenched by the water.

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"Of course," Irímé agreed. He sounded more like someone who was accepting an explanation to prevent an argument than because he believed it. "Sorry to interrupt your sleep. You're a magistrate, aren't you? I need you to draw up a contract."

Four and a half bottles of jarage would dull the intellect of the most intelligent person in the empire. Not even an hour's sleep and a bucket of water thrown over her head could shake off all its effects. Kitri's mind was still slow and sluggish. She heard the words "magistrate" and "contract" spoken by someone who she knew mainly as her friend's future husband. Naturally she jumped to what seemed to her to be the most obvious conclusion: a marriage contract.

He still wants to marry Abi after everything? Kitri thought in confusion. "What, now?"

"Yes, before my mother objects and demands more money."

Why would his mother object? Everyone knew how excited she was to have a royal daughter-in-law. For that matter, why would she demand money now when she would only have a right to it after the wedding?

"Isn't this very sudden?" Kitri asked, bemused. "Aren't you even going to have a proper ceremony?"

Irímé looked at her as if she'd started speaking a foreign language. "Ceremony? Who needs a ceremony?"

Technically he was right. Wedding ceremonies weren't legally required; all that was needed was for a couple to sign a contract and say their vows in front of a priest of Daisdíer[2]. In practice, of course, anyone who actually got married without a full ceremony and at least two hundred guests would be looked down on by their family, their wider community, and just about anyone who ever heard of it. Even worse it came with the implication of a hastily-concealed scandal.

Kitri warned him, "People will talk. I suppose this is Abi's latest bright idea. It's just as bad as her others."

"Abi has nothing to do with it," Irímé said, sounding as if she was the one talking nonsense. "She doesn't even know yet. I can't find her."

What in the name of all the gods? "You're going to leave her?" Kitri would have been furious about her friend being so casually abandoned if she wasn't so hopelessly confused.

Irímé now looked as if she'd sprouted a second head. "Er, yes? She lives here, not in Tananerl. Anyway, it's between me and Ilaran."

If she had been more sober Kitri would have realised by now that they were having two very different conversations. Unfortunately she was still half-drunk and had the idea of a marriage certificate firmly stuck in her head. "You're going to marry Ilaran?"

There was a long, awkward silence. Irímé's expression went from incredulous to horrified to resigned.

With a sigh he said, "We'd better start from the beginning. I think there's been a misunderstanding somewhere."

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Not even Haliran could complain about how comfortable the Silver Palace's cells were. She could however complain about how unbearably boring her imprisonment was. So far she'd had two visitors: Luamon and her housekeeper. The latter's visit could hardly be called that. She mainly wanted to ask if Haliran had specific instructions for how the household was to be run in her absence.

None of her other children came to see her. None of her friends dared show their faces. The empress hadn't summoned her yet or sent a lawyer to talk to her. She had no books to read, no records to listen to, not even a board to play Chiormurth[3].

For want of anything better to do she made up complicated arithmetic problems and solved them as slowly as possible. She had no paper to do her maths on, so she assigned numbers to the patterns on the wallpaper. That made the first few hours pass with relative speed. She was in the middle of a long division sum when the door opened.

Haliran looked up without much interest. It was probably just the guard delivering her dinner. Yet when the guard opened the door fully, she saw she had no tray in her hands.

"Only fifteen minutes, remember," the guard said to someone Haliran couldn't see. "I'll unlock the door when the time's up."

The still-unseen person said, "Thank you."

Haliran sat bolt upright in her chair. She knew that voice as well as she knew her own.

Siarvin stepped into the room. The guard closed the door behind him. Profound silence fell. The only sound was the key turning in the lock.

The two of them stared at each other for a long minute. Neither spoke. For the first time Haliran looked at Siarvin, really looked at him, and realised how much he'd changed. He had been beautiful once, all those years ago when she'd first seen him. Beautiful and so naïve. The latter was one of the main reasons she had chosen to marry him. But the first had played a part in her decision too. Now all his beauty had faded. His naïveté had been destroyed long before. There was nothing but coldness and fury in his eyes now.

I did this, Haliran thought. There was no true remorse or guilt in her thoughts. Just surprise, and the tiniest whisper of something that might have been regret.

She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Had she changed as much?

At last Siarvin spoke. He spoke conversationally, as if only commenting on the weather. "I used to be afraid of you."

Haliran stared at him silently.

"I thought you couldn't really be a person. You must be some demon sent to torment me. Do you know when I stopped fearing you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "That day you were thrown from your horse."

That had happened so long ago it took Haliran a long time to remember what he was talking about. Siarvin continued while she still puzzled over it. His next words brought the whole horrible experience back to her.

"Your leg was broken so badly the bone tore right through the skin[4]. I watched the doctor push the bone back into place and stitch up the wound. I watched you scream. Even the painkillers weren't enough to put you completely to sleep. And then I realised, you were experiencing some of what you did to me. I hadn't known you were able to feel pain until then." He smiled. It was nothing like a living man's smile and more like the contorted grimace of a corpse starting to decompose. "I stayed with you the whole time you were recovering. I fed you, cleaned your wound, and helped you stand."

Yes, he had done all of that. Back then she'd thought it was kindness or even devotion. A sign of how he'd accepted his life with her. Suddenly she wasn't so sure.

"Every day of those months I thought about how much pain you were in. I replayed your screams as I watched you sleep. I loved them." His smile slowly faded. The cold, emotionless indifference that replaced it was ten times worse. "But you didn't suffer enough. So many times I imagined killing you then. But none of them were slow or painful enough. Do you know what I did then?"

He took a step towards her. Then another, and another, until he was right in front of her. There was nothing in his eyes at all as he gazed down at her.

"I made a plan. I decided I'd play the caged and broken bird for as long as I had to. I'd make you believe I could never turn against you. Then, when you were most secure, I'd destroy you." He sighed morosely. "But my plan failed. I had so many opportunities. Every time I put it off. Eventually I realised I could never do it on my own. I'd played my part so well I'd become it against my will. If Ilaran hadn't come everything would still be exactly the same."

Siarvin turned away and looked around at her cell. "You ruined my life. But you see, I ruined yours too." He looked back when Haliran scoffed. That horrible smile was back. "Think about it, dear." She'd never realised a term of endearment could sound so poisonous. "Think of all the money you lost. Your friends cheated you, didn't they? Think of all your associates who were caught. They just weren't clever enough, were they? Think of all the times your plans collapsed around you. You overlooked something, didn't you?"

His hand closed around Haliran's shoulder like an iron vice. "No. I did all of that. When you had no one else to turn to, you came crying to me. And I listened so sympathetically, while I laughed and laughed inside. I wasn't able to directly act against you. But I stored up everything you ever said and repeated it to Ilaran." He let go of her and stepped back. "Your home will be a cell for the rest of your life. Your reputation is shattered beyond repair. Your crimes are in the newspapers of the most distant parts of the empire. And when they drag you out to the execution platform, when the executioner swings the sword, remember I sent you there. Not Ilaran, not your other victims, me."

The guard unlocked the door. "Time's up."

Siarvin looked at Haliran. Haliran looked at Siarvin. For once their usual positions were reversed. She stared up at him in fear and rage. He looked down at her as if she was no more than the dirt beneath his feet. He turned and left without another word.

The door slammed closed behind him.