She woke up late that evening, feeling much better and very hungry. She was still fully clothed. She sat up, and the bruises made their presence felt; she hissed at the pain.

"Are you awake, Alyn?" He must have sharp ears.

"Yes, my lord." She stood up gingerly and came to the front room. He was writing something by the fire. He looked over, assessing her stance.

"You're still hurting? I'll get some hot water and food brought up. You can bathe, and Evan gave me some ointment for your bruises." He sounded quite concerned.

"I'm all right, my lord," she said, not wanting him to be so upset for her sake. But he pulled the bell anyway, and when the maid came, he requested the food and the hot water. Alyn bathed as instructed and put the ointment on; it stung a little, but that soon faded. By then she was hungry, and the food was there, so she ate, and after that, she realised the whole afternoon had gone while she had been sleeping.

"Has anything else happened, my lord?" Miervaldis looked up from his own dinner.

"You mean, with respect to the investigation? No, nothing. I've been thinking, that's all." He put his plate down and stood up, went to pace by the window. It was open, allowing a cool draught in, which brought with it a faint scent of unfamiliar blossom. "Will you be up to having a look through those papers tomorrow?"

"Yes, my lord," Alyn said obediently. "But -" she hesitated.

"What is it?"

"I think maybe... I should go back to the lessons."

"Even now?"

"It wasn't all of them, my lord."

"What, all of the stairs?" He sounded dry.

"I just, well, I don't want to run away. And mightn't those pages have been... involved?"

He came back from the window to sit by the fire, but didn't pick up his food.

"It's possible," he said. "I did think of that, but there were a lot of them - I find it hard to believe that seven lords are involved. I think it's more likely just resentment of an outsider interfering in this court's affairs, I'm afraid."

"Doesn't Lord Cassian have a page?"

"No. I did check that. Given his, ah, temperament, I'm not that surprised. But there may be a link. It could be useful, but I won't have you falling down any more stairs."

"I won't, my lord," she said, wondering what she'd let herself in for. But she didn't want to run away, and she did want to see the look on the big page's face when she came back the next morning. Miervaldis nodded.

"Be careful then," he said.

Alyn made sure to be up early the next morning, and she spent the hours she had free between breakfast and the start of lessons exploring the enormous court. There were too many tiny side corridors for her to know it properly, but by ten o'clock, the appointed hour, she was in the Upper Chamber, seated neatly on the plumpest cushion in the place and wearing the blandest expression she could muster. The first page through the door actually did a double-take when he saw her and was shoved through the door by the page behind. She deliberately did not acknowledge them.

Lord Ronoy was two minutes late to the lesson; she thought it might be deliberate. He sneered at her, but gave her no other specific attention, much to her relief. The lesson this time was on inheritance; a subject almost entirely separate from the lesson of the day before; she wondered if he just talked about whatever was on his mind, or whether there was a plan of some kind. She found it hard to concentrate for the whole two hours; his reedy, thin voice was like a mosquito's whine, capturing attention with its sound rather than its content. It didn't help that he sounded bored too.

At the end of the lesson she left in the middle of the crowd of pages, hoping that they were not all in on it, and departed the crowd when they passed near the kitchen. Bensen found her there, crouching behind an abandoned water butt in a side corridor.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"Avoiding stairs," she grinned at him. He was carrying a tray of unbaked buns balanced on one hand. There was flour all over his apron and in his hair.

"Are you feeling better? No ice today?" And he winked at her.

"Yes, thanks," she said, thinking how nice it was that someone was glad to see her. He bent towards her; she eyed the tray with trepidation, but he had it under control.

"There's someone I think you should talk to, if you know what I mean."

"Who?" Her heart beat faster. Surely, he had to mean something connected to Jaquan's murder...

He started to reply, but someone shouted something down the corridor.

"Sorry," he said instead, looking rueful. "I've got to go. Some other time, all right?"

"Yes!" Alyn said, standing up from her hidey hole. He hurried off down the corridor, the tray still perfectly balanced. What does he know?

She started back to the rooms after that, thinking that she'd probably waited long enough, and didn't run into anyone on the way. Miervaldis had ordered in lunch, but hadn't eaten much of it. He was staring moodily at the tray and sipping the pale wine they sent up with everything. As she was eating, something Lord Ronoy had said in the lesson came back to her.

"My lord?"

He blinked and sat up, looking a bit dazed, as though she'd woken him up.

"Yes, what is it?"

"In Fifth Star Court, they don't allow women to inherit, do they?" The rules often differed from Court to Court, reflecting the long-ago time when they were nine separate countries.

"I believe that's the case, yes."

"Then who is Lord Cassian's heir? If he only has a daughter?" Miervaldis focussed properly on her for the first time since she'd come in.

"That's a very good point. I had forgotten about that... inheritance is pleasantly lax at home." He wore a funny expression, almost a smile, as though he was thinking of something else.

"I had better go, my lord," she said, after the silence had lapsed for a minute. "I've got lessons again in ten minutes."

"Be careful on the stairs."

"Yes, my lord," Alyn said obediently, and rolled her eyes when she had turned away. If he was going to harp on about that for the rest of their time here, it was going to get annoying.

"I need you fit to look through papers, after all."

She had forgotten about that. Disgruntled, she went to the lesson, unsure whether she wanted to spend the afternoon sitting with a bunch of boys who hated her listening to a boring lord who resented her, or sitting with a pile of boring papers next to a corpse, who presumably at least held no opinion of her at all.