"I understand," he answered, smiling. His hands were trembling. "I, too, feel fear, here in the heart of Heptagon House. What you do not know is that all of our party are trained soldiers and assassins. They are prepared to penetrate to the deepest recesses of Heptagon House to destroy your enemies."

Anything Patience answered could be her death sentence.

In the first place, she herself had been trained as an assassin, and she knew that if Prekeptor's plan had any chance of working, he had just destroyed it by saying it out loud in the open garden. No doubt throughout Heptagon House all the Tassal embassy was now being placed under irresistable arrest, with the words of their own prince as their indictment. That he did not know that he would be listened to here in the garden told Patience that Prekeptor was too great a fool for her to entrust her life to him.

But there was nothing she could say to stop him and clear herself. If she said, I have no enemies here in Heptagon House, she was admitting that he was somehow correct to call her the Heptarch's daughter. She had to go on pretending that she had no idea of why he was speaking to her, and to do that she had to pretend not to understand the plainest-spoken Tassalik. It wasn't likely anyone would believe it, but it was not necessary to be believed. It was necessary merely to make it possible for Oruc to pretend to believe it. As long as they could both pretend that she didn't know she was the rightful Heptarch's daughter, she could be allowed to live.

So she put on her most baffled expression and said, "I'm sorry, I guess I'm out of my depth. I thought I spoke Tassalik well enough, but I see that I don't."

"What is he saying?" asked Lyra. She sounded concerned.

As well she might be, since Prekeptor, far from coming to marry her, had come to kill her father and, no doubt, her as well.