Lord Valentine sat at a broad desk of some rare and highly polished blood-colored wood. The Coronal's big heavy-knuckled hands were spread out before him against the surface of the desk, as though he were supporting himself with them. His face was pale, his eyes seemed to be having difficulty focusing, his shoulders were slumped.

"My lord—" Hissune began uncertainly, and faltered into silence.

He remained just within the doorway, feeling awkward, out of place, keenly uncomfortable. Lord Valentine did not seem to have noticed him. The old dream-speaker Tisana was in the room, and Sleet, and the Vroon, but no one said a thing. Hissune was baffled. He had no idea what the etiquette of approaching a tired and obviously ill Coronal might be. Was one supposed to offer one's kind sympathies, or to pretend that the monarch was in the finest of health? Hissune made the starburst gesture, and, getting no response, made it again. He felt his cheeks blazing.

He searched for some shred of his former youthful self-assurance, and found nothing. Strangely, he seemed to be growing more ill at ease with Lord Valentine, rather than less, the more often he saw the Coronal. That was hard to understand.

Sleet rescued him at last, saying loudly, "My lord, it is the Initiate Hissune."

The Coronal raised his head and stared at Hissune. The depth of fatigue that his fixed and glassy eyes revealed was terrifying. And yet, as Hissune watched in amazement, Lord Valentine drew himself back from the brink of exhaustion the way a man who has caught a vine after slipping over the edge of a precipice pulls himself to safety: with a desperate show of unanswerable strength. It was astonishing to see some color come to his cheeks, some animation to his expression. He managed even to project a distinct kingliness, a feeling of command. Hissune, awed, wondered if it might be some trick they learn on Castle Mount, when they are in training to become Coronals—

"Come closer," Lord Valentine said.

Hissune took a couple of steps deeper into the room.

"Are you afraid of me?"

"My lord—"

"I can't allow you to waste time fearing me, Hissune. I have too much work to do. And so do you. Once I believed that you felt absolutely no awe of me at all. Was I wrong?"

"My lord, it's only that you look so tired—and I'm tired myself, I suppose—this night has been so strange, for me, for you, for everyone—"

The Coronal nodded. "A night full of great strangenesses, yes. Is it morning yet? I never know the time, when I'm in this place."

"A little past midnight, my lord."

"Only a little past midnight? I thought it was almost morning. How long this night has been!" Lord Valentine laughed softly. "But it's always a little past midnight in the Labyrinth, isn't it, Hissune? By the Divine, if you could know how I yearn to see the sun again!"

"My lord—" Deliamber murmured tactfully. "It does indeed grow late, and there is still much to do—"