Rudy paused to get an update on Lilibet Hornbeam's abscess from a cousin or second cousin of that widespreading family; nodded civil greetings to Lord Ankres, one of the several noblemen who had survived to make it to the Keep-His Lordship gave him the smallest of chilly bows-and stopped by Tabnes Crabfruit's little ill-lit workshop to ask how his wife was doing.

Tir went on, "He was playing with his sisters-he had five sisters and they were all mean to him except the oldest one. He was pretty scared, here in the dark." What little boy? Rudy wondered. How long ago? Sometimes Tir spoke as if, in his mind, all those little boys were one. Him.

"They sent a wizard up to find him?" Rudy was frequently asked to search the back corners of the Keep, or the woods, for straying children.

They ascended a stair near the enclave owned by Lord Sketh and his dependents, a wooden one crudely punched through a hole in the ceiling to join the House of Sketh's cells on the third level with those on the fourth. Warm air breathed up around them,

rank with the pungence of cooking, working, living, drawn by the mysterious ventilation system of the Keep.

One more point for the wizards who built the place, Rudy thought. However they'd powered the ventilator pumps and the flow of water, most of them still worked. He and Ingold had never been able to ascertain that one to their satisfaction. They'd found the pumps, all right, and the pipes and vents like capillaries through the black walls, the thick floors, but no clue as to why they still worked.

A young boy passed with two buckets of water on his shoulders, accompanied by a henchman wearing the three-lobed purple badge of the House of Sketh-Sketh was notorious for thinking it owned the small fountain in the midst of the section where most, but not all, of its servants and laborers lived. Alde suspected they were charging for access, but couldn't prove it.