“Who is running the estate?” I wondered aloud.

“Yaril, by the sound of her letter. She mentions that a Sergeant Duril, her new foreman, was very proud to hear you’d become a soldier. He asked her to send his best wishes along with hers, and to remind you that you’d promised you would write to him.”

And that was when I broke. I lowered my face into my hands and dissolved into tears. Spink was silent, doubtless embarrassed to witness this. I managed to calm myself enough to say, “Spink. You have to find a plausible lie for me. If it’s the last favor you can do for me, please do it.

Don’t let any of them know how I died. Not Yaril, not Caulder or my father, not Sergeant Duril. Please. Please.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he replied hoarsely.

I lifted my face in surprise. Tears ran unchecked down his face. He was not a tall man. He stood on tiptoes and thrust his arm into my cell window as far as the bars would allow. “I’d like to shake your hand a final time,” he said.

“I don’t think I can stand up, Spink. I’m hamstrung. Those leg irons cut into my ankle tendons badly.”

He pulled his hand back and peered down at my feet. He narrowed his eyes in sympathy. “Those bastards,” he said with quiet feeling.

“Lieutenant Spinrek! Sir?”

“What is it?” Spink scrubbed angrily at his eyes as he shouted back at the guard. “My time isn’t up yet.”

“No, sir, it isn’t. But you’re wanted right away. All the officers are being called to report. There’s been a disturbance out at the road’s end, some sort of sabotage. And—” Before the guard could complete his sentence, a muffled explosion shook my cell. The guard gave a yelp of terror. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. A sudden crack ran across the back wall of my cell.

The guard’s voice shook as he called down the corridor, “That sounded like it came from the prison quarters, sir! Do you think it’s an uprising?”

Epiny! I mouthed silently at Spink in horror.

“It couldn’t be,” he said aloud, but I heard the terrified doubt in his mind.

There was a second, smaller explosion. Dust hung in the air now, and I coughed. Spink looked in at me and our eyes met for a last time. “She sent you this,” he said hastily, and vanished for an instant from my sight.

Something wrapped in a napkin was thrust through the food slot in the bottom of my door. Then Spink bobbed into sight again. “Farewell, my friend,” he said through the bars, and then he was gone. I listened to the clatter of his boots as he hurried down the hall.

I noticed that he had not said, “Good-bye.” I hoped that he would be in time to whisk Epiny away from the scene of her mischief and get her safely home before anyone knew she was involved. And I wondered, with a sudden hope too sharp to bear, what else had she set in motion?