At his side, Alde whispered, "Who was it?"

"Saerlinn. I don't know if you knew him."

She nodded, tears starting in her eyes. Alde knew, and was friends with, almost everyone in the Keep. Again Rudy struggled with his instinct to hold her, to offer her silent reassurance. "It puts us in a bad place," he admitted quietly. "When we go to scout the Nest at Gae..."

"You?" Fear widened her eyes. "But you can't-" She bit off her words, and a slow flush rose to her cheeks. "That is-it isn't just for that," she added with a soft-voiced dignity that made Rudy smile. "What about your experiments with the flame throwers, Rudy? You said you'd be able to create weapons to hurl fire from the things that Gil and I found in the old laboratories. You can't..."

"They'll just have to wait," Rudy said quietly. "I'll put one together for myself to take to Gae; the rest can wait till I return." He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled at her frightened, woebegone face. "And I will return," he promised her.

She looked down, her eyes veiled, and she nodded.

Gil's voice cut sharply into the silence between them. "You think you'll really be able to put working flame throwers together, then?"

He looked up, startled at her tactlessness, and saw what she had seen-the tall form of the Chancellor of the Realm, Alwir, Minalde's brother, standing watching them in the mist and firelight of the gates. Rudy backed quickly away from Alde and took a few steps up the path toward the Keep.

"You bet," he bragged in his best Madison Avenue voice. "Hell, in a month we'll make swords obsolete."

"That would be to your advantage," Gil commented, "since you can't pick one up without cutting yourself."

But in spite of the banter, Rudy was acutely conscious of Alwir's cold gaze on him as he rejoined Ingold among the mages at the foot of the Keep steps.