The door banged to leave it dark for those within and feet retreated beyond. Rodvard stirred cramped muscles. “Will they come back?” Lalette’s voice whispered. The candle lifted slowly into light. Laduis Domijaiek was on one knee beside the fallen head, whose nose was broken off. The eyes that looked up held tears. “That man killed Baron Mondaifer,” he said, fiercely, “and I would like to kill him, too.” Lalette slipped off her head-mask and ran a hand across her hair, looking very princess with her dark head against the white Kjermanash fur. “A true sorrow and it is our fault,” she said. “Do you have names for them all?” “Oh, yes. You are the Princess Sunimaa, and she’s always getting into trouble because it’s cold where she comes from, and her heart is all ice, and the others don’t like her except for Bonsteg the beggar, who is really a prince in disguise, only she doesn’t know it yet. But Baron Mondaifer was one of my favorites. He’s from Mayern, you see, and he’s always lived in the forest, even if he is in favor of Prince Pavinius, and thinks he’s still a good prophet.” Said Rodvard, undoing laces to get out of his Zigraner dress; “Your mother will get someone to fix him and bring him back to life.” “No. His spirit’s gone away to another body, like father’s and now there isn’t anything left but dust. If mother has a new head made, I shall have to give it a different name.” The boy looked at Rodvard solemnly, and though the Blue Star was cold as cold upon his breast, he could not somehow draw quite clear the thought behind those young candid eyes—something about a place shrouded in clouds, an old house somewhere, with a diffused golden light. Weariness slit his jaws into a yawn. “There is a place where we can sleep?” II They had to take his mother’s bed, not meant for more than one, so that for the first time they lay close wrapped in each other’s arms with a night before them; and this, with the sharp memory of the peril shared on the rooftops hand in hand, was a little more than either could quite bear unmoved, even though the boy was in a corner of the room. They began kissing and holding each other very tight; presently deep breaths said Laduis was asleep. She did not resist (nor desire to). Afterward, Rodvard lay for a long time wakeful (thinking that this had been the sobbing, true union, not an arranged accident like that under the tree; they had pledged each other and were somehow one forever. Now he was committed, and there was a deep harsh sweetness in the thought of devotion and change, live and love, forgetting all ambition, high destiny and even the Sons of the New Day that had brought him to this.) Of course lark and Laduis rose before them in the morn; the first the pair heard was a double rap at the outer door and the boy’s voice saying; “Mother, we have guests.”