"What are you signing now?" Divvis asked, leaning across the desk and penciling at the paper in front of Elidath. He was a big, heavy-shouldered, dark-bearded man, who as he came into his middle years was taking on an eerie resemblance to his father, the former Coronal. "Is Valentine lowering taxes again? Or has he decided to make Carabella's birthday a holiday?"

Accustomed though he was to Divvis's brand of wit, Elidath had no taste for it after a day of such dreary meaningless work. Sudden anger flared in him. "Do you mean the Lady Carabella?" he snapped.

Divvis seemed startled. "Oh, are we so formal today, High Counsellor Elidath?"

"If I happened to refer to your late father simply as Voriax, I can imagine what you—"

"My father was Coronal," said Divvis in a cold, tight voice, "and deserves the respect we give a departed king. Whereas the Lady Carabella is merely—"

"The Lady Carabella, cousin, is the consort of your present king," said Mirigant sharply, turning on Divvis with more anger than Elidath had ever seen that kindly man display. "And also, I remind you, she is the wife of your father's brother. For two reasons, then—"

"All right," Elidath said wearily. "Enough of this foolishness. Are we going to run this afternoon?"

Divvis laughed. "If you're not too tired from all this Coronaling you've been doing."

"I'd like nothing better," said Elidath, "to run down the Mount from here to Morvole, taking maybe five months of good easy striding to get there, and then to spend the next three years pruning my orchards and—ah! Yes, I'll come running with you. Let me finish just this one last paper—"

"The Lady Carabella's birthday holiday," said Divvis, smiling.

"A patent of nobility," Elidath said. "Which will, if you'll keep quiet long enough, give us a new Knight-Initiate, a certain Hissune son of Elsinome, it says here, resident of the Pontifical Labyrinth, in recognition of his high merit and—"

"Hissune son of Elsinome?" Divvis whooped. "Do you know who that is, Elidath?"

"Why should I be expected to know any such thing?"

"Think back to Valentine's restoration ceremony, when he insisted on having all those unlikely people with us in the Confalume throne room—his jugglers and the Skandar sea-captain with the missing arm and the Hjort with orange whiskers and the rest. Do you remember a boy there too?"

"Shanamir, you mean?"

"No, an even younger boy! A small skinny boy, ten or eleven years old, with no respect for anybody, a boy with the eyes of a thief, who went around asking embarrassing questions, and wheedling people into letting him have their medals and decorations, and pinning them all over his tunic and staring at himself endlessly in mirrors? That boy's name was Hissune!"

"The little Labyrinth boy," said Mirigant, "who made everyone promise to hire him as a guide if they ever came to the Labyrinth. I remember him, yes. A very clever rascal, I'd say."

"That rascal is now a Knight-Initiate," Divvis said. "Or will be, if Elidath doesn't tear up that sheet of paper that he's staring at so blankly. You aren't going to approve this, are you, Elidath?"