“So from the very beginning it has been Orthallen?” Alberich’s question appeared to be mostly rhetorical. He didn’t look terribly surprised. “I would give much to know how he has managed to mindblock himself for so long, but that can wait for a later day.”

Both Kyril and the Seneschal, however, were staggered by the revelation.

“Lord Orthallen?” the Seneschal kept muttering. “Anyone else, perhaps; treason is always a possibility with any highborn—but not Orthallen! Why, he predates me in the Council! Elspeth, can you believe this?”

“I . . . I’m not sure,” Elspeth murmured, looking at Alberich, and then at Dirk.

“There . . . is a very simple way . . . to prove my words.” Talia was lying quite still to harbor her strength; her eyes were closed and her voice labored, but there was no doubt that she was very much alive to everything about her. “Orthallen . . . surely knows . . . where I was. Call him here . . . but do not let him know . . . that I have . . . recovered enough to speak. Devan . . . you will painblock . . . everything. Then . . . get me propped up . . . somehow. I . . . must seem to be . . . completely well. His reaction . . . when he sees me with Elspeth . . . should tell us . . . all we need to know.”

“There is no way I will countenance anything of the sort!” Devan said angrily. “You are in no shape to move a single inch, much tess—”

“You will. You must,” Talia’s voice was flat, implacable, with no tinge of anger, only of command. But Devan folded before it, and the look in the eyes she opened to meet his.

“Old friend, it must be,” she added softly. “More than my well-being is at stake.”

“This could kill you, you know,” he said with obvious bitterness, beginning to touch her forehead so that he could establish the painblocks she demanded. “You’re forcing me to violate every Healing Oath I ever swore.”

“No—” Dirk couldn’t quite fathom the sad, tender little smile she wore. “I have it . . . on excellent authority . . . that it isn’t my time.”

She got other protests from the rest when she decreed that only she and Elspeth should receive Orthallen.

With total painblocks established she was able to speak normally, if weakly. “It has to be this way,” she insisted. “If he sees you, I think he might be able to mask his reaction. At the least he’ll be warned by your presence. With us alone, I think it will be genuine; I don’t think he’ll bother trying to hide it initially from two he doesn’t consider to be physically or mentally threatening.”

She relented enough to allow them to conceal themselves in the room next door, watching all that went on through the door that linked the two, provided they keep that door open only a bare crack. Once everyone was in place, they sent for Orthallen.

It seemed an age before they heard his slow, deliberate footsteps following the pattering ones of the page.