as if he were my son." Then he turned away and vanished into the shadows of the street, a stooped, weary form in his hooded robe. Rudy watched him disappear into the sodden darkness, and it occurred to him that this was the first time Ingold had come out with a straight answer about his personal feelings. Shining wetness picked out the peak of the old man's hood as he passed under the glow of a lighted window far down the lane. The light was dim, the soft glow of a single candle or a shaded lamp. Rudy's eyes were drawn to the window, and he saw a wavering shadow pass across the mullioned panes within.
He knew that window.
After a moment he thought, What the hell? Why not?
He stepped from the shelter of the gate and hurried down the black lane in the rain.
Alde looked up, startled, as he tapped at her open chamber door. Then she recognized him, and her violet eyes darkened with pleasure. "Hello."
"Hi." He stepped hesitantly into the room, made uneasy by the dead stillness of the house below. The room itself was in wild disorder, curtained in shadow; bed, chairs, and floor were strewn with clothes, books, and miscellaneous equipment; dusky blood-rubies glittered on a pair of combs in the shadow, and white gauntlets lay nearby, like wrinkled upturned hands. Minalde herself was wearing the white gown in which he'd first met her; it was evidently a favorite, like an old pair of jeans. Her black hair, unbraided, lay in great crinkled swatches over her slim shoulders. "I came to see if you might like a hand with your packing."
"That was kind of you." She smiled. "I don't need a hand so much as an extra brain, I'm afraid. This-chaos... " She gestured eloquently at the confusion all around her.
There was a clicking tap of hard-heeled shoes in the hall behind him, and the short, stout woman Rudy remembered from the terrace-Christ, was that only yesterday evening?-came bustling in, dragging a small chest behind her and carrying a pile of empty sacks thrown over her arm. She bestowed a glance of withering contempt upon him, but didn't deign to speak. To Alde she said, "This was all I could find, your Majesty, and bless me if I don't think it's all we'll have room for in the cart. That and the great chest of my lord Alwir's."
"That's fine, Medda." Alde smiled, taking the sacks from her. "It's a miracle you could come up with this, in all this confusion. Thank you."
The older woman looked mollified. "Well, it's truth that the house is like a shambles, and I could barely find this. What you're coming to, your Majesty, I don't know-forced to ride in a cart, and hardly the clothes on your back and all. How we'll reach Renweth alive I'm sure I can't think."
"We'll make it," the girl said. "Alwir will get us there."
Without a word or a second glance for Rudy, Medda scurried to the corner of the room, where she began folding blankets and sheets, packing them firmly into one of the sacks. Alde returned to her own packing, folding the great mass of flame-cut crimson velvet that Rudy recognized as the cloak Alwir had worn that afternoon. "Most of this is Alwir's," she said to Rudy, nodding to the tumble of cloaks, tunics, and robes that half-covered the big bed. "He asked me to sort his things for him. It's hard to know what to take and what to leave behind." She packed away the cloak and picked up a quilt of star-embroidered silk, the colors of it changing and rippling as it moved. Rudy came over to give her a hand with it, being well-versed in the ways of laundromats, and she smiled her thanks.
"Well, packing was an easy one for me," he said. "All I've got is a blanket and a spoon and what I've got on. For a Queen, you're traveling awfully light."
She smiled at him and shook back the dark hair from her face. "Have you seen the cart I'm going to be riding in? It's about the size of that bed. I'm not usually this unencumbered; anywhere I go I always seem to end up taking carts and carts of things, books and clothes and spare cloaks and tennis rackets and a chess game. My maid takes-" Her voice caught suddenly on the words, as if she had physically stumbled in a swift run. It was thin