Sighing, aching in every joint, he sat on the pillows opposite, set the candle carefully aside and prepared himself to wait.

A scream wakened him.

Aster was the first he saw as he rushed into the parlor. Aster with her fist shoved against her mouth and her face white as her dead daughter’s. Then he saw Senna, wide-eyed and staring, but not at Tael—at something, it seemed, upon the floor. At something which, now that he noted it, Aster stared as well.

Foreboding flared, too late, and he stepped into the room, looked over Aster’s shoulder—

He had used a leather-hook; it lay by his right hand. The slash it had made across his throat was ragged—and very deep.

His eyes were still open.

“No!” Lute flung forward, went to his knees by the pooled blood, extended a useless hand—and pulled it back, clenched.

“Young fool! There was no need, no need.” The tears were hot, they fell into the pooling red.

A hand touched his shoulder; warm fingers gripped him. Behind him he heard Aster shift and clear her throat.

“Cedar was so undone by my—by Tael’s death that he killed himself. His love was such—”

“No,” whispered Lute, and—

“No,” said Moonhawk, as she gently kneaded his shoulder. “Cedar killed your daughter, housemother—unintended, but he was the instrument of her death. We have the story, if you will hear it. And we will stay and help you bury them, with every proper rite, if you will have our help.”

* * *

“I STILL DON’T understand why he did it,” said Lute, playing a blue counter over his knuckles, disappearing it and re-appearing a yellow, a red, the blue again, and, in addition, a green.

Moonhawk fed more twigs to the cook fire and glanced up at the starry sky. “Guilt,” she said softly, “and pain—he did love her, I think. In his way. But his way was too sober for her—the heedless one, remember? The one who laughed at everyone.” The fire flared and she ducked prudently back, keeping the blue cloak tightly around her.