“I can give ye a better reason than Hart not to trust her,” Susan said. “My aunt says she’s taken up with Eldred Jonas. Poor Aunt Cord! She’s had the worst summer of her life. Nor will the fall be much better, I wot. Folk will call her the aunt of a traitor.”

“Some will know better,” Alain said. “Some always do.”

“Mayhap, but my Aunt Cordelia’s the sort of woman who never hears good gossip. No more does she speak it. She fancied Jonas herself, ye ken.”

Cuthbert was thunderstruck. “Fancied Jonas! By all the fiddling gods! Can you imagine it! Why, if they hung folk for bad taste in love, your auntie would go early, wouldn’t she?”

Susan giggled, hugged her knees, and nodded.

“It’s time we left,” Roland said. “If something chances that Susan needs to know right away, we’ll use the red stone in the rock wall at Green Heart.”

“Good,” Cuthbert said. “Let’s get out of here. The cold in this place eats into the bones.”

Roland stirred, stretching life back into his legs. “The important thing is that they’ve decided to leave us free while they round up and run. That’s our edge, and it’s a good one. And now—”

Alain’s quiet voice stopped him. “There’s another matter. Very important.”

Roland sank back down on his hunkers, looking at Alain curiously.

“The witch.”

Susan started, but Roland only barked an impatient laugh. “She doesn’t figure in our business, Al—I can’t see how she could. I don’t believe she’s a part of Jonas’s conspiracy—”

“Neither do I,” Alain said.

“—and Cuthbert and I persuaded her to keep her mouth shut about Susan and me. If we hadn’t, her aunt would have raised the roof by now.”

“But don’t you see?” Alain asked. “Who Rhea might have told isn’t really the question. The question is how she knew in the first place.”

“It’s pink,” Susan said abruptly. Her hand was on her hair, fingers touching the place where the cut ends had begun to grow out.

“What’s pink?” Alain asked.

“The moon,” she said, and then shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Brainless as Pinch and Jilly, I am... Roland? What’s wrong? What ails thee?”

For Roland was no longer hunkering; he had collapsed into a loose sitting position on the petal-strewn stone floor. He looked like a young man trying not to faint. Outside the mausoleum there was a bony rattle of fall leaves and the cry of a nightjar.

“Dear gods,” he said in a low voice. “It can’t be. It can’t be true.” His eyes met Cuthbert’s.