The far door burst open and the rest of them tumbled back in. Ellen and Patrick bolted up to her and began talking about broken glass and people in white.

“Not here,” said Fence. “Come to my chamber.”

“Oh, Fence, for the love of mercy,” said Ruth. “Not all those stairs. Come to my room. I think Lady Ruth might even have kept there somewhat for our refreshment.”

They came with her docilely enough.

It seemed to Ruth, ushering her six guests into her room, that she had done nothing since returning to the Hidden Land except gather in odd places for uncomfortable conferences. Her three younger relations piled into the room and took over the bed. Ted lay on the rug. Fence, refusing her offer of the one chair, sat on the table. Randolph came past her last of all, and Ruth felt suddenly peculiar. He was much taller than the rest of them, and his constraint and the signs of stress on his face made him seem by far the most adult. Fence was as grown-up as they came, but Fence seldom looked it. How old were they, anyway? Younger than her parents? Ruth consulted the back of her mind, which was silent; and then blurred her thoughts, whereupon she knew that Randolph was twenty-six and Fence three years older.

Ruth shut the door. Randolph sat down on one of her chests, beneath the tapestry depicting the double white violet that blooms twice a year. Ruth felt it necessary to take the situation in hand. She took from the little wall cupboard a tray containing eight rather dusty goblets in red glass and a large red glass decanter. She put the tray down beside Fence, twisted the stopper out of the decanter, and poured into one of the goblets a thick, dark fluid. It clung to the sides of the glass and gave off a potent smell of blackberries. Ruth handed the glass to Fence, who was looking bemused.

“There,” she said. “Is that fit to drink?”

“It’s one of Agatha’s cordials,” said Fence. “Sweet but wholesome.”

Ruth accordingly distributed glasses to everybody, and sat down in Lady Ruth’s chair. “Now will somebody tell me coherently and in a decent order,” she said, “what happened in there?”

“Fence first,” said Randolph, in a stifled tone as if he wanted to laugh, “for great events transpired e’er we arrived.”

Fence snorted, and ran both hands through his hair, flattening it again. “Oh, great,” he said. “Two sorcerers with more wit than to use their powers; the one barred from any effect of violence by the lack of his weapon and a disinclination to do harm, t’other by her sworn oath. A tussle of children.”

“What made you so mad?” said Ellen.

“Me, thou knowest,” said Fence. “What did so enrage Meredith was, first, that any dare meddle in her affairs; second, that I should presume to remove the Lady Ruth; third, that I demanded to read o’er the indices of her libraries. She soon minded her that should she ope her indices to me, my presumption would then be revealed to me regarding the Lady Ruth.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Ruth.

“You shouldn’t,” said Ted.

Fence looked at him, and then at Ruth. “Indeed, she said she’d speak to you herself, and I could not gainsay her.”

Ruth experienced the swooping dread of a person who wakes up on a lovely summer morning and remembers that she has to go to the dentist. “Shan’s mercy, Fence! You told me not to trouble myself! Now she’s thrice as stirred up as she’d have been had I braved her, and you’ve left her to me?”

“What am I to the Lady Ruth,” said Fence, rather sharply for him, “that I might meddle so in her affairs?”

“How should I know? You said you could meddle!”

“Forgive me,” said Fence, more quietly. “I did in some wise mistake the Lady Ruth’s commerce with Meredith.”

“She hasn’t—-I haven’t had any commerce with Meredith all summer, not to speak of.”

“That, I think, is for your punishment. She hath withdrawn her custom of friendly confidence, thinking to wound you.”

Ruth found this reasonable, but could not refrain from saying, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Now I get to go be wounded, I suppose, and hope that’s excuse enough for leaving her tutoring?”

“Wait,” said Randolph. “Fence, thou hast no power o’er the Lady Ruth, but I have. I’ll remove her, as my betrothed, from a malign influence. Meredith will be choleric, but she’ll have little recourse.”

Ruth struggled with contradictory impulses. Having scolded Fence for saying he would help her and failing, it was foolish, not to mention ungrateful, to refuse the selfsame help when Randolph offered it. And yet she was indignant that he should choose this way out, as if he were certain she would never manage the matter on her own.

“Ruth doesn’t like it,” said Ellen, who was acute, if not discreet.

“Nor I,” said Randolph, promptly. “Yet meseemeth the handiest way from out our difficulties. My lady?”

“I’m not anybody’s lady,” said Ruth. She had figured out what bothered her. She disliked Randolph’s calling attention to the betrothal just when breaking it off would save them both embarrassment. But Randolph was right. She said, more calmly, “Yes, it is the handiest way out. It’s just not very savory.”

Randolph stood up. “No,” he said. “It is of a piece with all our business this summer. By your gracious leave, I’ll go rant at Meredith.”

“Shouldn’t you wait until she’s calmed down?” said Ted.

“No, I think not,” said Randolph. “In the wake of calm cometh thought; the less she thinks while yet she hath Ruth in her grasp, the better.” He paused on his way out and said to Fence, “I’ll make report to you.”

“Make it here, to all of us,” said Fence.

Randolph said, “As you will,” and left, closing the door with a certain force.

“What else happened?” said Ruth.

“ ’Twas Claudia,” said Fence. “Like me, Meredith taught her, and did presently refuse to teach her; yet she learned more than Meredith knew, and did, it now appeareth, some little mischief. She did strew about the open library library works not rightly the Green Caves’, or rightly theirs but secret. We know not whence she had Shan’s journal. The book concerning animals they had most properly from the Red Sorcerers, before the war; and they do use it to subdue the cardinal to their will, and for naught else. The third book, the history, they had from the Dwarves, though it differeth from our own accounts.”

Ted listened earnestly to all this, as if he were trying to commit it all to memory. The three younger ones, having heard it twice already, bounced gently, trying out the bed.

“All right,” said Ruth. “Now, almost nobody at High Castle wears red, except Claudia, who wears it all the time, and Benjamin, who has a red cape. How does this fit in?”

“We shy from red, for the reasons you saw in the book,” said Fence. “This is no law, nor hath it truly the force of custom. Claudia, methought, did wear red to be rebellious at little cost. Benjamin wears it because he is of Fence’s Country, where all the wars were fought. It is their reminder of what transpireth when sorcerers strive one with another.”

“Fence,” said Ted. “The man who sent us here wore red.”

“Good grief,” said Ruth, jarred. “I’d forgotten. So is he a Red Sorcerer? Is this all some complicated trap?”

“I know not,” said Fence, fixing her with a very sober expression. “But this matter, as it so far unfolds itself, hath not quite the smell of those Sorcerers. What smell it hath is strange to me.”

“Could Claudia be a Red Sorcerer?” said Laura.

“No doubt,” said Fence. “Insofar as she is a Blue Sorcerer, and an initiate of the Green Caves. She might have traveled, and cozened one of them also.”

“I couldn’t help wondering,” said Ruth, “why the mixture of Blue and Green sorcery should produce purple beasts. What if it’s a mixture of Blue and Red?”

“She had one blue and one red stone on her dagger,” said Ellen.

“Are the Red Sorcerers plotting a comeback?” suggested Patrick.

Ruth looked at Fence, who was leaning back, supported by his hands, and looking half-thoughtful and half-amused. There was a pause, as that line of discussion died for lack of knowledge. Ruth wondered if Fence could have supplied it.

“Benjamin,” said Laura, after a moment, “said red was the color of the Outside Powers.”

“That is so,” said Fence. “From them the Red Sorcerers did draw their power; they trifle not with the elements, as we other schools all do, but reach beyond them to their origins.”

“Sounds dangerous,” said Patrick, in a tone relatively free of sarcasm.

“It is so,” said Fence, looking him straight in the eye.

Patrick didn’t look away, but he did shrug in the way he would when he thought you were taking something too seriously. Fence smiled at him, started to speak, and stopped.

“What’s the matter?” said Ruth.

“You’re very like,” said Fence to Patrick. “Very like Prince Patrick.”

“That’s a pity,” said Ruth, tartly, over the ache in her throat.

“Fence?” said Ted. “What about the rest of us?”

Ruth turned and glared at him; he was only making things worse. Ted lifted his chin and gave her a level, slightly arrogant stare from under his thick brown bangs. It was a very Edward-like look.

“Well,” said Fence. “Ellen is like the Princess Laura, and Laura like the Princess Ellen. Thou, my prince, art very like Edward overall, but hast some relish of contention in thee, that I do welcome, and did wish to find in Edward. Thou hast also less of maturity.”

“I’m only fourteen,” said Ted.

“Well for you,” said Fence, his mouth quirking, “that Edward is—that Edward was someways behind his age.”

Ruth, fuming, saw that Ted had indeed made things worse, making Fence think about Edward, whom Fence had been particularly fond of. “What about me?” she said.

Fence gave her a considering look, and she wished she had not tucked her feet up under her skirts. Lady Ruth was dignified. “And thou,” said Fence, unsmiling, “hath an outward show very like thy other, but art somewhat softer i’the’center.”

“I am not,” said Ruth, severely, “a chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie.”

Ellen choked.

Fence made a face. “’Tis too sweet a combination,” he said. “You mistake me. The Lady Ruth made never a sweet show.”

“No wonder she and Meredith got along,” said Ellen.

Fence did smile at that.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Ruth.

“I would be gone also,” said Fence, “but there are preparations cannot be hurried.”

“It’s just that between Benjamin and Agatha and Randolph—and this betrothal—”

“Is Andrew better?” said Fence.

“Yes!” said Ruth. “Andrew doesn’t love us; we never even pretended to love Andrew.”

“Ruth,” said Ted, with an appalled gaze that had nothing of Edward in it.

Ruth gulped. Now she was doing it. You jerk, she thought to herself. It must be the mental equivalent of wanting to pick off a scab; except it isn’t your scab.

“Trouble not,” said Fence, kindly.

“You keep saying that,” said Ruth.

“Well,” said Fence, “you are all so sensible that, did it not sort so ill with my presentiments, I’d think you conscience-scathed, and eager to amend it.”

Sensible? thought Ruth. Sensible to sight as well as hearing? Sensitive? She opened her mouth, but Ted was quicker.

“We are conscience-scathed,” said Ted. “Claudia made it sound as if we had some hand in all your misfortunes. We didn’t know we were affecting real people, when we played our game; but we did play it. It’s as if,” said Ted, suddenly inspired, “we had shot an arrow o’er the house, and hurt our brother.”

“No more but so?” said Fence.

“Well,” said Ruth, in response to Ted’s helpless glance, “it argues a sort of carelessness in us, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not just conscience,” said Ellen, suddenly. “We’re sorry. Not because we did it, but because it pains us to see you in evil straits.”

“I know it,” said Fence. “Why?”

“Because we’re so sensible, I suppose,” said Ruth, dryly. “Don’t the evil straits of strangers pain you, Fence?”

“Of a certainty; but not in this wise.”

“That’s it,” said Ted. “You’re strangers, and yet you aren’t.”

“And you,” said Fence. “So are you to us.”

“And that,” said Ruth, “is why I want to go. We’ll be doing something to make restitution.”

Randolph came in without knocking, shut the door, and leaned on it. He looked harassed.

“What did I tell you?” said Ruth. “Around and around in your head for weeks afterward.”

“Nay, hours merely, I’ll wager,” said Randolph, with a very brief smile.

“Do you want some more cordial?” said Ruth, offering him her untouched glass. “You look as if you needed strengthening.”

Randolph smiled again. “I thank you, no. The deed’s done; you are free of the Green Caves. But free upon condition.” He exchanged a long look with Fence, the meaning of which escaped Ruth. Randolph seemed resigned; Fence, after a blank moment, cast his eyes to the ceiling and let his breath out in a sound that might have been a snort, or an aborted chuckle.

“Don’t be so dramatic!” said Ruth, losing patience. “What do I have to do? Dress in sackcloth and ashes? Promise her my firstborn son? Set the sun, the moon, and the stars in the sky? Sort innumerable bushels of mixed wheat, barley, and rye into their separate piles? What? I can’t wait.”

Randolph, grinning as Ruth had never seen him grin, came forward and knelt at her feet. Ruth wished he wouldn’t.

“No,” said Randolph. He looked up at her with a face not much altered from the one she saw in her mirror every morning. If she had had a brother who resembled her, instead of taking after her father’s side of the family, he would have looked like Randolph. “No,” said Randolph again. “If that’s what thou hast stomach for, this stricture is bare of substance as the air.”

“Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,” said Ruth, unable to resist.

Randolph frowned, and looked at Fence, who said, “Is this thy play-maker again?”

“Yep,” said Patrick from the bed. “Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. And you know what he said right after that? ‘My mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night’s revels and expire the term / Of a despised life closed in my breast / By some vile forfeit of untimely death.’ ”

This precise and unemotional recitation was accorded a polite silence. Ruth glared at her brother. That was Romeo’s speech, just before he went off to crash the Montagues’ party and meet Juliet and begin the love affair that would kill him. Patrick thought she needed a warning. He was an idiot.

“Would you mind telling me, my lord,” she said to Randolph, “what is this stricture?”

“’Tis merely,” said Randolph, “that we wed before a year is out.”

“Well, you’re right, that’s no problem,” said Ruth, over a very uncomfortable jolt in her stomach. “We should be finished with this business, one way or the other, long before a year is out.” Oh, Lord, she thought, what a thing to say. He’ll probably be dead.

“Did you give her your word?” said Fence to Randolph.

There was another silence, not a polite one. Ruth was amazed. She watched Randolph turn red and then extremely white, and then sit back on his heels and look squarely at Fence.

“I did so,” he said. “So you see, my lord wizard and my lady play-maker, you need have no fear of me; for that I promise, I do not perform. I beg your gracious leave.” And he stood up, with considerable grace, and went at a measured pace out of the room. He closed the door so gently that all they heard was the little click of the latch.

“Well!” said Patrick. “Tact isn’t your middle name, is it?”

“Shut up,” said Ruth. Had Fence known what he was saying? By killing the King, Randolph had broken the most solemn oath he would ever take, and he was painfully conscious of it. Could Fence possibly have made such a wounding remark by accident?

“I meant Fence,” said Patrick.

“Shut the hell up!” said Ruth.

“Spare him thy ire; he hath the right of it,” said Fence. He slid off the table, looking very tired. “And so hath Randolph also. Give you good day.”

And he, too, went with a certain stateliness, his hands buried in his black, star-shimmered robe, to the door, and went out, and closed it quietly.

“Patrick,” said Ruth. “Don’t do that.”

“All I did,” said Patrick, “was make an observation. It was Fence who asked the wrong question.”

“Don’t argue,” said Ted. “Things are bad enough without it.”

Nobody contradicted him. Ruth put the glass of cordial to her mouth and drank its contents in three gulps. It tasted beautifully of blackberries; and enticingly, just a little, of alcohol; and even less, but unmistakably, of dust.