'We've watched you for a long time,' Asara said eventually. 'Your house and family, too. Partly it was because we knew your father was one who was sympathetic to our cause, one who might be persuaded to join us eventually. He had connections through his patronage in the Imperial Court. But mostly it was because of you, Kaiku. Your condition.'

'Condition? I have no condition,' Kaiku said.

'I admit I had my doubts when I was sent here,' replied her former handmaiden. 'But even I have noticed the signs.'

Kaiku tried to think, but her head was muddled and Asara's explanation seemed to be throwing up more questions than answers. Instead, she asked directly: 'What happened last night?'

'Your father,' Asara said. 'You must have remembered how he was when he returned from his last trip away.'

'He said he was ill…' Kaiku began, then stopped. She sounded foolish. The illness he had feigned had been an excuse. She did remember the way he had seemed. Pale and wan, he was also quiet and lethargic; but there was a haunted look about him, a certain absence in his manner. Grandmother had been that way when Grandfather died, seven years ago. A kind of stunned disbelief, such as she had heard soldiers got when they had been too long exposed to the roar of cannons.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Something happened, something he would not speak of. Do you know what it was?'

'Do you?'

Kaiku shook her head. They trudged a few more steps in silence. The forest had enshrouded them now, and they walked a zigzagging way through the sparsely clustered trees, stepping over roots and boulders that cluttered the wildly uneven ground. A dirt ridge had risen to waist-height on their right, fringed with gently swaying shadowglove serviced by fat red bees. The sun beat down from overhead, baking the wet soil in a lazy heat that made the world