Jules gazed silently at the compartment door that had just clicked loudly into place. That face…

He turned and looked at his companion, a friend he had known for more years than he cared to count. Daedalus looked as shocked as Jules felt.

"Surely that was Clio," Daedalus said, speaking softly so their seatmates wouldn't hear. He ran an elegant, long-fingered hand through hair graying at the temples, though still thick despite his age. "Wasn't Clio her name? Or was it… Clemence?"

"Clemence was the mother," Jules murmured. "The one who died. When was the last time you saw the child?"

Daedalus held his chin, thinking. Both men looked up as a small knot of students, led by an official-looking older woman, bobbed down the rocking corridor. He saw her again-that face-and then she was gone. "Maybe four years ago?" he guessed. "She was thirteen, and Petra was initiating her. I saw her only from a distance."

"But of course, they're unmistakable, that line," Jules said in an undertone. "They always have been."

"Yes." Daedalus frowned: confronted with an impossibility, his brain spun with thoughts. "She had to be the child, yet she wasn't," he said at last. "She really wasn't- there was nothing about her-" "Nothing in her eyes," Jules broke in, agreeing.

"Unmistakably the child, yet not the child." Daedalus cataloged facts on his fingers. "Clearly not an older child, nor a younger."

"No," Jules said grimly.

The conclusion occurred to them at the same instant. Daedalus's mouth actually dropped open, and Jules put his hand over his heart." Oh my God" he whispered. 'Twins. Two of them! Two?