“I say leave it up,” said Teskhamen, which surprised me, and I think it surprised Marius a little to be interrupted. Teskhamen was fashionably dressed in a fine suit and linen much like Gregory. “Let them communicate and let them come together,” Teskhamen said. “Especially now that we know Rhoshamandes is hunting them down. We hear that Rhoshamandes is in a rage, and plotting against us with a vampire from Hungary named Roland. Both have powerful resources. And you—we—need to make contact with those creatures, and we need to find out what they know of Amel.”

“Yes, that is the name of the emergency,” said Marius. “The name of the emergency is Amel.”

“Well, Amel’s inside me now,” I said. “But he’s gone silent.”

“Let me summarize what we know,” said Marius. “This morning at about nine a.m. a non-human without a name called the radio broadcast and explained that he and someone named Derek were escaping Rhoshamandes’s castle on the island of Saint Rayne. The creature explained that Derek had been held captive by a blood drinker named Roland of Budapest who’d had the being imprisoned in that city for ten years.” Marius’s voice gave a subtle indication of his anger over this. “Rhoshamandes only lately came in possession of this Derek and subjected him, according to the caller, to great cruelty. Immediately after this, the unidentified caller gave a long message in an unknown tongue.”

I nodded. “I’ve heard it, sounds most like Sanskrit to me,” I said, “but perhaps Arjun knows this language.”

“I don’t know it,” said Arjun a little apologetically. “I can’t crack it. It does sound like Sanskrit but it is not related to Sanskrit.”

Marius continued: “Now what the being said about Rhoshamandes holding this creature Derek and treating him cruelly is true,” he said. “Allesandra joined us just before sunrise this morning and is here to verify that she saw firsthand Rhoshamandes’s treatment of Derek. Rhoshamandes hacked off Derek’s left arm and actually tried to burn the severed arm in the fireplace. This Derek creature healed at once from the injury. And he is most certainly a creature exactly like Garekyn Brovotkin and Kapetria and Welf, whose stories you know. Indeed, Allesandra has left Rhoshamandes on account of his treatment of Derek and his refusal to make Derek’s presence known to us or to bring Derek here to the Court. Arion has also left Rhoshamandes on account of this. Now Rhoshamandes knows full well of Garekyn’s attack on Killer and Eleni. And yet he withheld knowledge of this Derek from us.”

“Was it a human being who made this call?”