Soldiers lift Brin from a litter to the back of the healer's cart. He whimpers, head tossing from side to side as though he's in the throes of a terrifying nightmare, despite all the medicine he's been plied with. Tug watches, arms folded, and expression neutral. But I sense war raging in the serpentine ravines of his mind.

Two soldiers mount their horses. The Duke has ordered them to escort Brin to the nearest town and see him installed at the healer's. It will be a hazardous journey through the forest, considering Brin's condition. Even when they reach the flat land beyond the river swamp, the way is not without danger. If the bird-men return, they do not stand a chance.

Only the healer who has been well paid and instructed to send regular word of Brin's progress, appears satisfied with her new charge and change of fortune.

A soldier approaches and announces my tent is ready. I thank him, and with a last glance over my shoulder at the departing cart, head for the tent so I may change my dress.

The center of the tent is tall enough to stand in. A hemp rug lies unevenly across the hacked down bush and shrubs beneath my feet. Two small wooden chests sit open on one side of the shelter, overflowing with silk embroidered robes that look startlingly out of place.

I take my water flask and hairbrush from my saddlebag, and wash my face, wiping dirt and blood on the hem of my torn dress. Then I sift through the dresses, searching for the cobalt gray robe I wore in Lyndonia the morning Duchess Elise took me to visit Kel.

Breathing is awkward. I am not looking forward to the next five hours' riding. But at least my mare was not hurt when a bird-man tripped her with his lasso. I cannot imagine abandoning Dancer, nor seeing her suffer just so I may reach our final destination.

I struggle to rip apart the hook-and-eye closures on the back of my tattered dress. Pain flares with each sharp, tugging movement. I don't have the strength to break the top hooks. With the back of my dress gaping, I peer out from the tent, hoping to borrow a knife from a nearby soldier.

Tug is walking in my direction, away from where the troop is gathered. Unless he is going to relieve himself, he is heading to see me. Unlike the soldiers who erected the tent and promptly vanished, he is the only man around here who couldn't care less about my privacy.

I consider ducking back inside. Standing in front of Tug with my dress half falling off is not a welcome thought. But Brin has gone and the unit will want to move on. I will be stuck half-dressed with everyone wondering what is taking so long, otherwise.

"The Prince asked me to give you this," Tug says when he is closer. He holds a slim bell-shaped phial half-full with yellow pus-like liquid. "It's Nocturne Melody, a pain reliever."

Pretty name for something so foul looking. I take the glass bottle, pop the cork and sip. The acrid taste makes me want to vomit.

"It is usually drunk by men dying on the battlefield. Unless you're planning on a soldier carrying you to the Red City you should slow down." The icy shards in his voice set me on guard.

That moment in the forest, of complicity, of working together, of relief at seeing each other alive, has vanished. Perhaps he is angry with me because Brin might die.

"I need a knife," I say. "To get my dress off."

He takes the short knife from his belt. The blood on it is still fresh. He steps closer, eyes accusing, and wipes the blade on the sleeve of my dress. I flinch as though he's just spat in my face. With most of the blood now on my sleeve, he lays the knife flat in his palm like a challenge.

I slip the pain reliever into the pocket of my robe, and reach for the handle. An ink engraving on the hilt bears the same beast markings as the tattoos on his face. I take it, and with a smile I do not mean, thank him for his help.

I return inside the tent, rip the last two dress hooks with the blade and let the cloth fall to my feet. Until two minutes ago, I wanted to tell Tug I was sorry for Brin's situation. Now I want to thank him for banishing the guilt.

Brin snatched Kel. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I hear Ma screaming as Brin tore my brother away and swatted her to the ground. If Brin dies, it is nothing to me.

I am doing up the front buttons of the gray dress, distracted by the stains on it which remind me of Kel in the tower, when Tug bursts through the flap door.

"I haven't finished!" I say annoyed. I fumble with the final buttons.

"From the lengthy discussions after the attack, I take it you and the Prince are on good terms again?" Tug says, ignoring my protest.

"He offered to let me go," I say curtly.

Tug snorts. "He has grown up in the Ruby Court. Survival for him depends on his ability to deceive and manipulate. He told you what you wanted to hear."

I take out my brush and start tidying my hair. "He risked his life to save me."

"So did Brin, and I didn't see you hurrying to his side to check his injuries." Tug's anger boils close to the surface. I should be careful, but it is as though we have circled around back to the beginning. Strangers. Enemies. Walls within walls.

He blames me for the outcome of today's attack. If he wants to blame someone, he should look to himself.

"Why would I care what happens to Brin? He has never considered me, or Kel, as anything close to human."

Tug picks up a beautiful cream and lemon dress from the nearest clothes chest, and wipes his blood-encrusted face and hands all over it. I offer him water to finish the job properly. He ignores my attempt at defiance.

"So the Prince offered you freedom?" he says. "How did he persuade you afterwards, not to take it?"

"He didn't need to persuade me. You've done that for him. I could have left Lyndonia with Kel many days ago, but you betrayed me for Elise. If I leave without fulfilling our bargain, who knows what the two of you will do to my brother."

Tug's jaw tightens. "Betrayal is only possible when there is trust in the first place."

"What do you want?" I ask coldly.

"Lord Strik will hear of the bird-men's failure before we even reach the Red City." He pauses, crouches to pick up his knife from the rug near the clothes chest. "Perhaps you believe the Prince had nothing to do with the attack on his escort. Perhaps you believe it is coincidence that while the Prince was defying the King and refusing the Rudeashan princess in the north, the Carucan army was betrayed in the south and the King taken prisoner. Perhaps Jakut is the noble hero he pretends. It does not matter."

He gets up, slips the knife in his pouch and stands so his face is an arm's length from my own. The rage in him has gone, or transformed into another barrier to hold out the world.

"It does not matter because the Prince is weak," he says. "If Lord Strik can govern the bird-men who have not been seen so far south for hundreds of years, do you think he will have any trouble bending the Prince to his will? At some point, the Prince and Lord Strik met with the same objective—to see Jakut and Lady Calmi married. We can assume the Prince was quickly brought under Strik's power. As soon as his memories return, he will be under it again."

"If you are so sure he and Strik betrayed the Carucan army to get rid of the King and see Jakut crowned, why are we even going to the Red City? You should be telling the Duchess to prepare for war."

"We must discover what Lord Strik has planned before taking rash actions which will set the kingdom at war with itself."

"So the valiant Tye Keylore is back among us to save the Kingdom. Excuse me if I find that hard to swallow."

"No one wants a war, Mirra."

He is at the exit before I've had time to blink.

"Wait!" I say. The sketches. Until Tug arrived, distracting me, I had thought of little else. I had considered discussing Jakut's claim with him, but he hasn't exactly paved the way for an exchange of confidences.

"Where does Strik's power come from? What is it?"

Wind howls across snowy tundra. Nothing but the sting against his face, the bulk on his back, swirls of snow and emptiness stretching on and on.

For the brief moment Tug's memory absorbs the mind-world, it is as though I can breathe without the pain in my chest. A sense of aliveness, awareness, as crisp and clear as air.

"Trying to understand the origin of this power," he says, "will take you down a path as dark as the mind that wields it."

I know of only two reasons to cross the infinite tundra between Caruca and the Kingdom of Rudeash. One, to access the tundra mines where hundreds of glitter-eyed children slave until they die. The other, to visit the far away, isolated Kingdom of Rudeash.

"We cannot defeat Lord Strik without understanding his power. Why were you crossing the tundra?"

"I had reason to believe he was born in Rudeash."

"But he is a lord."

"A title given to him when he was adviser to King Rex. But he rose to the King's side from nothing."

"And you thought there might be others from Rudeash with similar abilities?"

"They seemed to be a simple people. Nothing I saw or heard suggested there was anyone else like him. Nothing explained it."

I nod. Jakut's mother was from Rudeash. For a moment I thought she could have passed on a talent of foresight to her son. But if Strik is an anomaly, and the Rudeashans do not possess special powers, Jakut's claim about the sketches is highly doubtful. Unless, I grow a little faith in the Carucan Gods.

My head swims from taking too many short breaths, from the Nocturne Melody trickling through my blood, from questions and half-truths and lies. Too many to hold straight.

But I cannot forget Jakut's attitude after the attack. The concern in his eyes when he realized I was injured was real. His offer to release me was genuine. If he is a liar and a manipulator and a coward, I have lost all instinct for survival.

"What if the Prince," I say, "only understood Strik's power and what he had got himself into when it was too late? What if he purposefully increased the dose of the mist berries before the long-sleep to erase everything in his past and break Lord Strik's hold over him?"

"If it were so," Tug snarls, "he should have informed himself of the matter. It changes nothing. As soon as Lord Strik enters the Red City or the Prince's memories return, he will fall under Strik's influence."

I am not so certain. Yesterday, Lord Strik demonstrated a certain caution with the power in his voice, using it only on Tug and me. He did not try to control Jakut. He did not try to escort the Duke's unit to the Red City. And he deemed the Prince's long, unexplained absence and my presence, enough of a threat to his plans to try to kill me.

He must be waiting for something before he risks entering the city, a city which has kept him locked out, power or no power, for nearly three decades.

"We must learn how King Alixter has kept Strik away from the palace and ensure nothing is changed," I say. "In the meantime, it may take weeks for Jakut to remember pieces of his past."

I stop. But if he has lied about the sketches, then Queen Usas and Lady Calmi are already surfacing in his consciousness.

"What is it?" Tug asks.

"Jakut showed me drawings. Portraits he said he has had in his possession since waking from the long-sleep."

"And?"

"If he is lying, and they were done more recently, then he is beginning to remember."

"Why would he lie?"

"I was in one of them. He says our meeting was the will of the Carucan Gods."

A slight indent appears in Tug's bottom lip. "If you're wondering whether there is any possible way he drew a picture of you before he met you, the answer is no."

"He has a sketch of Kel."

"He was in the Pit the day we bought you and Kel there." Tug steps towards me. Up close the specks of dirt in the wide-open flesh above his eye are visible. "There are ways to get inside a person's head. Without the sight. He's drawing his net around you. He wants to make sure you act in his interests when we're in the Ruby Palace."

"I will act in my own interests."

A spark flashes in his dead gaze. "I'm counting on it."

Once he has left the tent, I fold the bloodstained, cream and yellow dress, and return it to the chest. Something metal pokes my hand. I dig in and find a wrought iron mirror, packed by a maid for the journey and forgotten. A broken piece of looking glass would make a reasonable weapon.

Before tucking it into my saddlebag, I check I am presentable for the Duke and the Royal Court.

My pupils are large with Nocturne Melody. Perspiration gathers at my hairline, and my face has a sweaty, unhealthy glow. The evening I saw myself in the dining room at Lindy flutters into my thoughts. I had been disturbed by the strange foreignness of my appearance. By the wildness in my eyes, the semblance of a lady, the six years that had suddenly caught me up.

I am no longer disturbed. I am ready. Ready to face the Ruby Court and the truth about Jakut. Ready to end this.

Sorry this is late! It was my daughter's sixth birthday and I totally forgot to post! Thanks for reading, voting and commenting. xox