Kaiku stared at her in disbelief, but Asara appeared not to notice.

She made a vague gesture to indicate their surroundings. 'I thought it best not to start a fire in the ipi's glade, so I moved you here.'

Kaiku hung her head. She was too drained to protest any further. Asara watched her in silence for a time.

'I must know,' Kaiku said quietly. 'My family…'

Asara put down the spoon she had been using to stir the pot and knelt before Kaiku, taking her hands. 'They are dead.'

Kaiku's throat tightened, but she nodded to indicate she understood. 'What happened?'

'Would you not rather eat first, and compose yourself?'

Kaiku raised her head and looked at Asara. 'I must know,' she repeated.

Asara released her hands. 'Most of you were poisoned,' she said. 'You died as you slept. I suspect it was one of the kitchen servants, but I cannot be sure. Whoever it was, they were inefficient. Your grandmother did not eat at the evening meal last night, so she was still alive when the shin-shin came. I believe that somebody sent the demons to kill the servants and remove the evidence. With no witnesses, the crime would go unsolved.' She settled further on her haunches.

'Who?' Kaiku asked. 'And why?'

'To those questions I have no answers,' she said. 'Yet.'

Asara got up and returned to the pot, occasionally turning the fish. It was some time before Kaiku spoke again.

'Did I die, Asara? From the poison?'

'Yes,' replied the handmaiden. 'I brought you back.'

'How?'

'I stole the breath from another, and put it into you.'

Kaiku thought of Karia, her other handmaiden, who she had seen lying dead on the floor of her room.

'How is that possible?' she whispered, afraid of the answer.

'There are many things you do not understand, Kaiku,' Asara replied. 'I am one of them.'

Kaiku was beginning to realise that. Asara had always been the perfect handmaiden: quiet, obedient and reliable, skilled at combing out hair and laying out clothes. Kaiku had liked her better than the more wilful Karia, and often talked with her, shared secrets or played games. But there had always been the boundary there, a division that prevented them from becoming truly close. The unspoken understanding that the two of them were of a different