“Sure of what?” he demanded. “The minionette is dead and I love you. I loved you from the first, but until I conquered the minionette—”

“Aton, please let me talk. Things will be hard for you, and there is not much time.” Her formality amazed him.

“Coquina!”

She ignored his cry and began talking, a trifle rapidly, as though reading a lecture. “I went to the forest before you were released from Chthon and I talked with the minionette. I talked with Malice. I showed her the hvee I wore, and she took it and showed me that she loved you, even as I.”

“She did, in her way,” Aton said.

“She was lovely. I could see the family resemblance. She told me those things about you that I had to know, so that I could care for you during your recovery and she warned me about the evil one that would come from Chthon, so that I could protect you from him. She said—she said that she would be gone, soon, and so she left me the song.”

“The song!”

“She wanted you to be happy, Aton and she saw that your minion blood was destroying you, while the evil one waited for the remainder. She gave you to me. You did not conquer her, Aton. Not that magnificent woman.”

Comprehensive appalled him. “All this—before I escaped from Chthon?”

“We loved you, Aton.”

“Malice knew she was going to die?”

“Yes. Her name, by the terms of her culture, means ‘Compassion,’ and she loved your father enough to leave him, and you enough to die for you. When Aurelius saw you pass the fields, with her, he understood, and he gave up his long fight against the swamp blight. She died soon after. The cousin of Five came, and we buried Aurelius beside her in the forest.”

“The song,” Aton said, unable to concentrate.

Coquina glanced at him. “I had to wake you...early,” she said. “The song—” She came to a decision. “This is the song.”

She sang, then, and it was the melody of his childhood. Her voice lacked the splendor of that of the minionette; but no voice, he realized, could compete on such a level. It was the song.

She followed it through to its conclusion, but the magic was gone. “It isn’t broken any more,” he said, understanding only now that the true appeal of it had not been the melody itself, but the fact that it was incomplete—as had been his whole relationship with the minionette. Not the song, but the break had been his compulsion. Why had he never seen this before?

Coquina watched him closely. “It means nothing to you, now, Aton?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, finding the expression inept. “You might as well have spared yourself the trouble.”

“No, no,” she said, smiling more warmly. “That is good. It means that the minion in you is gone. You will be well again, if only—”