“Sorry! Dammit, you didn’t even believe me! My best friend, and you didn’t believe a single word I said!”

“Dirk!”

“Then telling everyone I’m some kind of drunken fool—”

“I didn’t say that!” Kris was beginning to get just as angry as Dirk was.

“You didn’t have to! You implied it very nicely! And gave your precious uncle more ammunition to use on me!”

“Dirk, Kris has every right to worry about you if you’ve been acting oddly. And Kris, Dirk’s right. Even I could tell you didn’t believe him without having to read you.” Talia knew she should have kept her mouth shut, but couldn’t help herself. “And he’s right about Orthallen.”

They both turned on her as one, and spoke in nearly the same breath.

“And I don’t need any more help from you, ‘Queen’s Own’—”

“Talia, I’m getting very tired of listening to your childish suspicions about my uncle—”

She went white-lipped with anger and hurt. “Fine, then—” she snarled, clenching her fists and telling herself that she would not deliver a pair of hearty blows to those stubborn chins. “I wash my hands of both of you! You can both go to Hell in a gilded carriage for all of me! With purple cushions!”

Unable to get another coherent word out, she spun on her toe and ran to the closest exit, and didn’t stop running until she reached the Field and the sympathetic shoulder of Rolan.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Dirk sneered in triumph.

“What I’ve done?” Kris lost what little remained of his temper and groped visibly for words adequate to express his anger. “Gods, I hope you’re satisfied—now that you’ve managed to get her mad at both of us!”

In point of fact, a nasty little part of him Dirk hadn’t dreamed existed was pleased, for now, at least, they were on an equally bad footing with Talia. He could hardly admit it, though. “Me? All I did was defend myself—”

“I,” Kris interrupted angrily, “have had just about enough of this. I’ll talk to you about this mess if and when you decide to stop behaving like a damn fool and when you quit drinking yourself into a stupor every night. Until then—”

“This is just a little too public a place for you to start making threats.”

Kris bit back the angry words that he knew would put any hope of reconciliation out of reach. “Far too public,” he replied stiffly, “and what we have to say to each other is far too private, and can and should wait until then.”

Dirk made an ironic little bow. “At your pleasure.”

There didn’t seem to be any way to respond to that, so Kris just nodded abruptly, and stalked off down the corridor.