“He is more than horse; think of him as a familiar spirit. He will return to my people with my message. Will you do this for me?”

He was close to weeping himself. “Is there nothing more I can do?”

“If you do that, you will have done more than I dared hope. You take with you all my gratitude, and my blessings. Now go, please, and quickly.”

He did not speak again, and she heard the scrape that signaled his departure.

She felt for her contact with Rolan. Her bond with him was at too deep a level for the magician even to sense, let alone block. Although alternating waves of pain and faintness threatened to overwhelm her, she managed to remain aware until she knew with total certainty that Rolan had gotten her message-bundle from the trader.

Rolan did not need any instructions to know what to do. Her contact with him weakened and faded as she weakened with effort and blood loss and he headed for the Border at his fastest pace, until it vanished altogether as he reached the edge of her fast-shrinking range. By then it was almost dawn.

Now, there were just two more tasks, and she would be able to give way to her anguish, her hurts, her grief.

First, the bottle. The trader had been right to be nervous about argonel. It was chancy stuff. Sometimes even the normal dose of four drams killed—but the Healers used it now and again to end the suffering of one they could not save. It had the advantage that no matter how great the overdose, there were no painful side effects such as there were with other such drugs—nothing but a peaceful drifting into sleep. If four drams could kill, fourteen should make death very sure.

Using the broken-off arrowhead, she scraped a hole in the floor beneath the pile of molding straw that was supposed to be her bed, a hole just deep enough to bury the bottle. Alessandar had not been the kind of monarch that often used his dungeons; by the grace of the gods the floors were packed earth rather than stone, with a pit dug in one comer for a privy.

She would not use the drug yet—not until she was certain that the Queen had received the warning. Soon, Bright Lady—make it soon—

Then she scraped a second hole, and a third, and hid the arrowhead from the broken arrow and the one she’d pulled from her own shoulder. If by some mischance they should find the bottle, she could still cut her wrists with one of them.

Her shoulder was aflame with pain and bleeding again, and a little gray light was creeping down the ventilation hole when she’d finished.

She lay on the straw and let herself mourn at last.

Tears of sorrow and of pain were still pouring from her eyes when blood loss and exhaustion finally drove her into unconsciousness.