“And Diar did everything his own way, and equally well, and he beat me in a fight outside my mother’s father’s house. Then, to apologize, he disguised us both and took me to the tavern where my mother worked. I wasn’t allowed in there, you see. Even my mother didn’t know me that night—they thought I’d come from Paras Derval with one of the court women.”

“Women?” Paul asked.

“Diar was the girl. He was young, remember.” They laughed softly in the dark. “I was wondering about him, just a little; then he got two of the town girls to walk with us on the beach beyond the track.”

“I know it,” said Paul.

Coll glanced at him. “They came because they thought Diarmuid was a woman and I was a lord from Paras Derval. We spent three hours on the beach. I’d never laughed so hard in my life as I did when he took off his skirt to swim and I saw their faces.”

They were both smiling. Paul was beginning to understand something, though not yet something else.

“Later, when his mother died, he was made Warden of the South Marches—I think they wanted him out of Paras Derval as much as anything else. He was even wilder in those days. Younger, and he’d loved the Queen, too. He came to Taerlindel and asked me to be his Second, and I went.”

The moon was west, as if leading them on. Paul said, looking at it, “He’s been lucky to have you. For ballast. And Sharra now, too. I think she’s a match for him.”

Coll nodded. “I think so. He loves her. He loves very strongly.”

Paul absorbed that, and after a moment it began to clear up the one puzzle he hadn’t quite understood.

He looked over at Coll. He could make out the square, honest face and the large many-times-broken nose. He said, “The one other night we talked alone, you said to me that had you any power you would curse Aileron. You weren’t even supposed to name him, then. Do you remember?”

“Of course I do,” said Coll clamly. Around them the quiet sounds of the ship seemed only to deepen the night stillness.

“Is it because he took all the father’s love?”

Coll looked at him, still calm. “In part,” he said. “You were good at guessing things from the start, I remember. But there is another thing, and you should be able to guess that too.”

Paul thought about it. “Well—” he began.

The sound of singing came to them over the water.

“Listen!” cried Averren, quite unnecessarily.

They all listened, the seven men awake on Prydwen. The singing was coming from ahead of them and off to starboard.