She tried to lift her head, but could not. Her gaze jumped fearfully from side to side. “What…? Where am I? Oh, no, surely you are lying. You are some demon of the lands before the gate, and this is a test.”

He was surprised to discover that he felt even lower than he had thought he would. “No, Lady Elan, no. You are alive. I could not bear to see you die.” He dropped to his knees and took her hand, still cold as death. “You are in a safe place. I had confederates.” He shook his head. “I make it too grand. A woman I know, one who has been kind enough to tend you, and to help especially with…with your privacies…” He felt himself blushing and was disgusted. Matt Tinwright, man of the world! But something about this woman reduced him to childish embarrassments. “She and I stole you out of the residence.” He could not quite bear to tell her yet that they had dragged her to this place in a laundry basket.

Her eyes were now shut again. “Hendon…”

“He thinks you have run away. He seemed amused, to be honest. He is a bad man, Lady Elan…”

“Oh, the gods have mercy, he will find me. Matt Tinwright, you are a fool!”

“So everyone tells me.”

She tried to rise again, but was far too weak. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

“No! I…I love you. I couldn’t bear to…to…”

“Then you are twice a fool. You loved a dead woman. If I could not let myself love you then, how could I now, when you’ve denied me the one release I could hope for?” Tears ran down her cheeks but she did not, or perhaps could not, lift her hands to dry them. Tinwright moved forward with his own kerchief, but as he began dabbing at her face she turned away. “Leave me alone.”

“But, my lady…!”

“I hate you, Tinwright. You are a boy, a foolish boy, and in your childishness you have doomed me to horror and misery. Now get out of my sight. Is there no chance the poison might yet kill me?”

He hung his head. “You have been asleep almost three days. You will regain your strength soon.”

“Good.” She opened her eyes as if to fix his face one last time in her memory, then squeezed them shut again. “At least then I’ll be able to take my own life and do it properly. All gods curse me for a coward, seeking to do the deed with womanish, weak poisons!”

“But…”

“Go! If you do not leave me alone, you craven, I shall scream until someone comes. I think I have the strength for that.”

He stood on the stairs for a long time, uncertain of where to go, let alone what to do. The rains had begun again, turning the muddy alley into a swamp and the Summer Tower into an unlit beacon on a storm-battered coast.