"Only into the dancing room."

He saw her frown, but was not accustomed to reading expressions. He waited for a reply.

“I will dance for him,” Modh said.

She told Mal to stay back in the sleeping rooms in the hanan. Mal nodded. She looked small, slender, weary. She put her arms around her sister. “Oh Modh,” she said. “You're brave, you're kind."

Modh felt frightened and hateful, but she said nothing, only hugged Mal hard, smelling the sweet smell of her hair, and went back to the dancing room.

She danced, and Ralo praised her dancing. Then he said what she knew he had been waiting to say from the moment he came: “Where's your wife's sister, Bela?"

“Not well,” Modh said, though it was not for a Dirt woman to answer a question one Crown asked another Crown.

“Not very well tonight,” Bela said, and Modh could have kissed him from eyes to toes for hearing her, for saying it.

“Ill?"

“I don't know,” Bela said, weakening, glancing at Modh.

“Yes,” Modh said.

“But perhaps she could just come show me her pretty eyebrows."

Bela glanced at Modh again. She said nothing.

“I had nothing to do with that stupid message my father sent you about her,” Ralo said. He looked from Bela to Modh and back at Bela, smirking, conscious of his power. “Father heard me talking about her. He just wanted to give me a treat. You must forgive him. He was thinking of her as an ordinary Dirt girl.” He looked at Modh again. “Bring your little sister out just for a moment, Modh Belenda,” he said, bland, vicious.

Bela nodded to her. She rose and went behind the yellow curtain.

She stood some minutes in the empty hall that led to the sleeping rooms, then came back to the dancing room. “Forgive me, Lord Master Bal,” she said in her softest voice, “the girl has a fever and cannot rise to obey your summons. She has been unwell a long time. I am so sorry. May I send one of the other girls?"