"The handle of the gun is bone," said Rachaela.

"Don't worry. The bone is human."

"I'm not afraid of you," said Rachaela. "I should be, probably. But I'm not."

"I should hate you to be afraid of me."

"Yes." Rachaela drank her tea. Althene watched her. Her classical face was serene, her dark eyes only like still waters, running inevitably deep. "Don't the Scarabae frown on a homosexual liaison?"

Althene lifted her eyebrows. She looked amused now.

"Not in itself," she said.

"But they want the line to go on. They want children born."

"Yes."

"Is that," said Rachaela, "why your mother beat you?"

"It was why my mother thought she beat me."

Rachaela looked into Althene's eyes, carefully.

"I'd rather we didn't get into some situation that you and I both would find—embarrassing."

"I become bashful," said Althene, "very easily."

"To spare me, then."

"So selfish," said Althene.

"I don't sleep with women."

"No. You are a nun. No women, and no men."

"Once. You know the result."

"The little girl who kills."

"Enchanting, adorable Ruth, yes."

"Perhaps the fault wasn't with you, but with the father."

"It doesn't really bother me whose fault it was. It was cause and effect."

"And so you'll be always celibate. How enticing."

"It isn't meant to be, Althene."

"I'm on fire," said Althene. "All I can think of is clambering up the ivory tower and breaking in the window."

Rachaela could feel her heart knocking fast in her throat. It was the brandy. The shock, and the brandy. Or just exhaustion.

"I want to go home," she said.

"Home is where the heart is."

"My heart isn't anywhere."

"So you have said." Althene nodded at the bar, and a girl came at once with a tray, the bill, a tired omnivorous smile.

CHAPTER 32

MALACH UNLOCKED THE DOOR. After the usual moment he allowed, for the sound of the key was the equivalent to a knock, he entered Ruth's bedroom. She was sitting up in the blue and green bed, with the sheet raised over her nightshirt to her collarbone. She had been drawing.

The two dogs pushed through, and went to the bed. Ruth let her drawing go and gave them a hand each to sniff. She rubbed their long heads. Enki climbed onto the bed and stood there, huge as a horse, staring about.

Ruth laughed up at him in pleasure.

The lamplight caught Ruth's treasures on the table, by the books. An apple of green glass, the gold-plated razor with which she would have slashed Lorlo Mulley's throat, a cheap floral case of cosmetics and manicure, a porcelain duck, a gold bell on a chain. Under the table lay the leopardskin, rolled up, a creature not yet become. Oskar walked over to it and growled, as a courtesy.

"Get up," said Malach, "and come into the room."

Ruth looked at him intently. She even slept with her hair in plaits.

"Are you going to kill me after all?"