"Move your hands!" she commanded in a ringing voice. "You're going to hear me even if I have to scream."

Garion, afraid that she meant it, took his hands away.

"She carned you when you were a baby," Ce'Nedra went on, seeming to know exactly where the sorest spot on Garion's wounded conscience lay. "She watched your very first steps. She fed you; she watched over you; she held you when you were afraid or hurt. Does that sound like a monster? She watches you all the time, did you know that? If you even so much as stumble, she almost reaches out to catch you. I've seen her cover you when you're asleep. Does that sound like someone who doesn't care?"

"You're talking about something you don't understand," Garion told her. "Please, just leave me alone."

"Please?" she repeated mockingly. "What a strange time for you to remember your manners. I didn't hear you saying please this morning. I didn't hear a single please. I didn't hear any thank you's either. Do you know what you are, Garion? You're a spoiled child, that's what you are."

That did it! To have this pampered, willful little princess call him a spoiled child was more than Garion could bear. Infuriated, he began to shout at her. Most of what he said was wildly incoherent, but the shouting made him feel better.

They started with accusations, but the argument soon degenerated into name-calling. Ce'Nedra was screeching like a Camaar fishwife, and Garion's voice cracked and warbled between a manly baritone and a boyish tenor. They shook their fingers in each other's faces and shouted. Ce'Nedra stamped her feet, and Garion waved his arms. All in all, it was a splendid little fight. Garion felt much better when it was over. Yelling insults at Ce'Nedra was an innocent diversion compared to some of the deadly things he'd said to Aunt Pol that morning, and it allowed him to vent his confusion and anger harmlessly.

In the end, of course, Ce'Nedra resorted to tears and fled, leaving him feeling more foolish than ashamed. He fumed a bit, muttering a few choice insults he hadn't had the opportunity to deliver, and then he sighed and leaned pensively on the rail to watch night settle in over the dank city.

Though he would not have cared to admit it, even to himself, he was grateful to the princess. Their descent into absurdity had cleared his head. Quite clearly now he saw that he owed Aunt Pol an apology. He had lashed out at her out of his own sense of deep-seated guilt, trying somehow to shift the blame to her. Quite obviously there was no way to evade his own responsibility. Having accepted that, he seemed for some reason to feel better.