Cordelia did as requested. Alastair’s room was bigger than hers, furnished in dark gentleman’s colors: green walls, a muted Persian rug. Alastair had a collection of daggers, and he had brought quite a few of them with him from Cirenworth. They were the only beautiful things Cordelia remembered Alastair ever paying special attention to: one had a sheath of blue-and-white enamel, another was inlaid with golden designs of dragons, kylins, and birds. A pishqabz carved of a single piece of ivory hung above the washstand, near it a khanjar whose blade bore an inscription in Persian: I wanted so much to have a gleaming dagger, that each of my ribs became a dagger.

Cordelia settled herself in a blue armchair. Alastair turned a little to look at her; his fingers tapped out a rhythm on the newsprint. “What about Charles?” he said.

“I know he has become engaged again,” she said. “To Grace Blackthorn.”

Alastair’s restless hands stopped moving. “Yes,” he said. “Pity for your friend James.”

So he knows, Cordelia thought. Charles must have told him. “So—are you all right?” she asked.

Alastair’s black eyes were fathomless. “What do you mean?”

Cordelia couldn’t bear it any longer. “I heard you and Charles talking in the library,” she said. “I heard you say you loved him. I won’t tell anybody else, I promise. You know I always keep my word. It doesn’t make the least bit of difference to me, Alastair.”

Alastair was silent.

“I wouldn’t have said anything, but—for Charles to become engaged again, after he knew how unhappy you were about Ariadne—Alastair, I don’t want anyone to be cruel to you. I want you to be with someone who will make you happy.”

Alastair’s eyes glittered. “He’s not cruel. You don’t know him. He and Grace have an understanding. He explained it to me. Everything Charles does is so he and I can be together.” There was something mechanical about the words, as if they had been rehearsed.

“But you don’t wish to be someone’s secret,” said Cordelia. “You said—”

“How do you know what I said? How could you possibly have overheard us without going out of your way to do so? You were upstairs, we were downstairs—unless you followed me,” Alastair finished slowly. “You were eavesdropping. Why?”

“I was afraid,” Cordelia said, in a low voice. “I thought you were going to tell Charles—what I had made you promise not to say.”

“About that demon creature at the bridge?” he said incredulously. “About your little friends and their little schemes and secrets? I gave you my word.”

“I know,” she said, close to crying, “and I should have trusted you, Alastair. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overhear such things. I know they’re private. I only wanted to tell you I loved you just the same. It makes no difference to me.”