That last, said as Halcom turned to go, had the sound of a formal dismissal, superior to inferior.

There, you see? he taunted that seductive whisper. I ain’t a friend to the likes of a highborn, even if his people did cast ’im off. A mouse might’s well ask a hawk t’be his friend. Hawk might even say yes—till he got hungry.

Another week passed, and the city was struck with a heat wave that was so oppressive people and animals actually began dying.

The Queen closed the Court and sent everyone but her Privy Council out of the city. But there was nowhere for the poor and the working classes to go, and even if there had been, how could ordinary people just pack up and leave? How would they make a living, pay their bills, feed their children? Life in Haven went on as best it could. As many folk as could changed their hours, rising before dawn, working until the heat grew intolerable, enduring as best they could until late afternoon, then taking up their tasks again in the evening. The Prior knew a clever trick or two, though, and the Brethren began going through the poorer neighborhoods, teaching people what the Prior had taught them—for although it was the Lord of the Beasts that the Brethren served, nevertheless, Man was brother to the Beasts.

Water-soaked pads of straw in windows somehow cooled the air that blew through them, so long as there was a breeze. And if there wasn’t, the cheapest, more porous terra-cotta jars filled with water and placed about a room also helped to cool the air as the water evaporated from them. Stretching a piece of heavy paper over a frame, then fastening that frame by one side to the ceiling and attaching a cord to a corner created a huge fan that would create a breeze when the winds themselves didn’t oblige; there were always children to pull the cord, and they didn’t mind doing so when the breeze cooled them as well. And the same cheap terra cotta that was used for those jars could be made into tiles to be soaked with water and laid on the floor—also cooling a room or the overheated person who lay down on them. It helped; all of it helped.

People were encouraged to sleep on flat rooftops or in their gardens or even in parks by night, and in cellars by day.

But there was always someone greedy enough to want to make a profit from the misfortune of others. Suddenly the dank and dark basement rooms that had been the cheapest to rent became the most expensive. Not all landlords raised the rents on their cellars, but many did, and if it hadn’t been so stiflingly hot, there might have been altercations over it.

But it was just too hot. No one could seem to get the energy even to protest.