Now she looked not wary but positively suspicious. Still, he was relieved to see her sink back into her seat, eyes fixed on his. Never did he let his fingers leave her wrist. Her pale skin was soft, invitingly warm, slightly tacky with the dirt of the road. "Then what? Speak plainly!"

"I want only the promise of gold."

"I do not understand."

Ammas refilled her cup. She took it without waiting this time, not even looking at the water before sipping, her concentration focused on him. There was a great intelligence behind those hazel eyes, perhaps as much as there was behind the eyes of the Emperor. If they also possessed his cruelty, Ammas couldn't see it. Nor could he see the glimmer of the wolf lurking within. "The way I work these days is more improvisational than it once was. I can only take my cases as they come to me, and consult my instincts rather than a ledger."

The princess nodded again, seeming a little more at her ease, perhaps because Ammas was beginning to sound more like a reasonable merchant than either the vengeful cursewright or the huckstering charlatan she'd expected.

"I would propose an arrangement between us. We work out payment in advance. I do what I need to do to diagnose you -- "

"Again, why do you not believe me? Why would anyone invent such a tale? This has been more painful than anything I could have imagined, I don't -- "

Ammas held up a hand and she stilled for moment, her teeth worrying her lower lip. "I will discuss all that with you in as much detail as you want. After we agree on payment, your highness. But I'll tell you this much: if my examination reveals that you are mad, or have invented this tale -- "

She flared up at once, almost burning away all the modest goodwill he had built. "I am not lying, Master Cursewright!"

"Your highness, please. We speak of theoretical matters."

Carala sighed almost theatrically. "Very well."

"If my examination reveals some issue that I cannot treat, then I will charge you nothing. Further, I will pay the expense of a carriage to take you home to Talinara."

"That is very gracious of you." Her voice had turned soft, almost shy. "But I must tell you, you are not going to find a lie, or madness, or anything but what I've told you." Carala looked up again, and there was a sadness in her face that thawed his heart more than he would have cared to admit. "Tacen was real. What he -- what I did with him -- was real. The bite. The -- the love-making. When the moon -- and I -- I -- "

"Changed," he offered softly. She nodded, unable to force herself to say the word. "Obligations to my trade aside, your highness, I'll tell you that I do not expect to find madness or a lie. But there is the possibility you're not actually suffering from wolf's blood sickness."

At that Carala looked nearly as shocked as she had when the Lioness girls had invited her to come to their place of business. "You're lying."

"No. Don't place too much hope in it, your highness. But you are a woman with many enemies, most of whom you probably don't even know."

"You mean my father's enemies."

"I do."

"Tell me plainly what you are hinting at, Master Cursewright."

"I doubt I am the only man or woman alive with knowledge of curse lore. And tell me, your highness, in your study of cursewrights, did you find that we only break curses and dispel enchantments and cure magical sicknesses? Or did you find at times, when the Emperors of the Malachite Throne demanded it, that we cast them as well?"

Carala's mouth fell open. "Are you -- is there -- is there a curse to make someone believe she is a werewolf?"

"Of course. There are as many ways to addle the mind as imagination and cruelty can invent."

Carala regarded Ammas in a shrewd, studious way. "Might that curse have come from you?"

"Me?"

"Yes. Why not you? You're as wronged as any of your kind claims to be by my father. More than some, from things I've heard."

Ammas could feel the blood draining from his face. In his mind he grappled not to think of the Silverlamp Theatre and the awful things that had happened there.

What is the sentence, Ammas?

"Perhaps so," he said, clearing his throat. "But if you suspect me, then you have two choices: leave, or believe me when I tell you I did no such thing. I wasn't even sure you were still alive. When you were born, I had rather more pressing business than following news of the Imperial family. Afterward I heard rumors of stillbirths. Until you came here this morning, that was the last I had ever heard of you."

"Yes," Carala said softly. There was an old sorrow in her eyes. "The stillbirths. Three, that I remember. I think there were more that they kept from me, or which ended too soon too be called a babe. I was mama's last living child. The Madrenites said she could bear no more."

At Carala's expression Ammas felt suddenly and intensely ashamed of the murderous fantasies that had addled him in the garden. It burned in his stomach and in his bowels like a smoldering coal.

"I am very sorry, your highness," he replied quietly.

"Are you?" said Carala with a touch of acidity.

"I am." That candlelit evening, the Emperor's dulcimer, the Empress-Consort's smile, as gentle as his own mother's had been. "I never knew your mother well, but she was kind to me once, and never involved with -- with your father's politics. I . . . I hope she is still well."

"So do I." That acid note had softened. "I cannot imagine what this has done to her. I hope when Varallo Thray told my father they kept it from my mother. Told her I had run off, or some such."

Ammas, who knew only too well what Somilius Deyn III thought of sparing the feelings of any of his intimate associates, said nothing.

Carala drew herself up and took a deep breath, steeling herself. "All right, Master Cursewright. What payment would you ask in exchange for your service, if I am indeed not mad or a liar?" There was a sardonic rasp in her voice that encouraged Ammas.

"Is that bracelet on your wrist something you'd be willing to part with?" Ammas had already decided he would ask this in payment, though if the bracelet was as valuable as it looked, it might take him some time to find a buyer. The cursewright was an expert appraiser of jewelry. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, crowns were all among the most commonly bewitched objects. In his earliest studies Ammas had learned how to determine whether precious goods bore inimical enchantments, and so almost incidentally he had learned to tell priceless gems and baubles from paste or forgeries.

Carala glanced down, drawing her hand up, touching the heavy bangle with her fingertips. "This? I suppose. Tacen told me that we needed things to sell. This is just something my father insisted I wear to concerts in the Palace or to performances in the city."

"Then that will serve as payment."

"That's it? That's all you want?"

Ammas might have laughed had he known that the run of his thoughts just then had been identical to Casimir's when the boy and the princess had discussed buying a pasty. That bracelet would represent, by a wide margin, the single biggest payment he had ever received since he had begun practicing as a cursewright in Munazyr. "That's all I would want, your highness."

Whatever she had expected him to want, it had been far more than this bracelet. "Agreed, Master Cursewright. It's more than agreeable." The look on her face darkened somewhat. "Except I haven't any other coin or jewelry. Everything else I took from my home I've spent or lost on my way here. I have no way to get home."

"I'll pay your way as far as that's concerned. Until someone comes to retrieve you, you may remain here."

A wistful smile curled her lips. "Would you mind if I chose instead to stay in the cells at the Othillic Libraries?"

Again, Ammas felt a smile of his own curl his lips. "You liked it there?"

"Very much so, yes. I thought the Archive in Talinara was the grandest in the world. It was the place I liked best outside the Palace. But I was quite mistaken."

"The Munazyr Library is not only grand, it's one of the oldest. I think it's only the third temple to Othillion built, maybe the oldest that still survives. Those cells you stayed in?"

"Yes?"

"That's merely the original library. Just a few underground cysts to hide the God of the Book's teachings from the Sultan's janissaries. Over time it grew."

Now the princess's eyes were positively alight. "How wonderful! I wish someone had told me."

"The deacons don't like to advertise it. Othillic philosophies tend toward modesty. But, your highness, may I take it that we are now in a business relationship?"

"If you would phrase it so, Master Cursewright, yes."