I'd never seen anybody fly directly over the city, and I had good reason to believe there was a law forbidding it. I called to Poyning to come back, and heard a faint cry from below, which also I imagine was a command to turn about, but Poyning was by this time drawn well ahead and apparently out of earshot. Cursing his foolhardiness I gave chase, moved, I've no doubt, by a sort of schoolboyish idea that if there was going to be a row it would be shabby to back down out of it; and very soon we were soaring over the very heart of the great sea of white buildings. Now our troubles began. We were fairly well acquainted with the city as it appeared from the ground level: from above, there was a bewildering similarity about those marble roofs and courtyards. We wheeled round, until Poyning thought he had descried our house from the maze, and with a shout to me he began to descend, confidently enough. Then, suddenly, he checked his flight. 'This is the wrong place,' he cried, and I saw him flap his wings in an effort to get up again. But it was too late. He had no room to manœuvre. His wing-tip struck the great eave of a building at the edge of the courtyard, and to my horror I saw his arms fly up and his body shoot straight down, dropping to the marble paving with a thud that turned me sick to hear. I managed to alight without mishap, and a moment later was tearing off my wings and running to his assistance. Poyning lay on his side, in the tangled wreck of his gear. 'It's only my foot,' he groaned, but as he said the word he rolled over and fainted. In a few seconds I had his body clear of the mess and was examining him for injuries. Poyning came to himself almost at once, but when I touched his right ankle he winced and uttered a sharp cry. 'Better get a litter, Mirlees,' he muttered between his clenched teeth. 'There's a bone broken.' At this moment I heard a sound of light footsteps behind me, and looking round beheld a woman, who had apparently just emerged from the pillared doorway of the building. Poyning raised himself on one elbow, staring at her as at some enthralling vision, and I'm afraid I so far forgot my manners as to do likewise. The sudden apparition of such beauty as hers might have set any man off his balance. It robbed me of speech. The woman's skin was white as the marble everywhere around us, her eyes more deeply purple than the skies out of which we had fallen, her features of a clean-chiselled magnificence that literally struck the breath from your lips as you beheld, while her hair, pure blue-black in hue, tumbled over her shoulders in cascades of sombre splendour. There was no mistaking the identity of that woman. She was the princess of the blood royal, to whom we had seen Saunders Philipson betrothed. With a grace I cannot hope to describe she knelt beside Poyning, her features melting into a look of compassion that almost made me regret I wasn't the injured party myself.