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"What is it?" she asked.

He drew a piece of paper out of his jacket and he handed it to her across the table. It was fine stationery folded in half and in half again.

Kapetria opened it. Derek could easily read the large perfect alphabetical script without leaning over to crowd her. In a flash, he realized what it was. It was what Dertu had told Kapetria to do over the phone line--if they had to communicate with one another via the internet--to transliterate the ancient tongue of Atalantaya into phonic words via the alphabet. And as he heard the written syllables in his head he understood them:

You cannot hurt him. I love him. You cannot hurt them. I love them. You must find a way to do it without hurting him or them. Or it will not be done.

She looked up and smiled. "Very well," she said.

"What does it say?" asked the Prince.

"You really don't know?"

"No." Again he shrugged. "He didn't tell me what it meant. He only kept repeating it and telling me that I had to give you the message. That you couldn't leave without the message. And so I wrote it down just before coming to see you. Does it make sense?"

"Yes," she said. "It makes sense. Isn't it his place to tell you what it means?"

"Probably," said the Prince. He sat up, and let the front legs of the chair settle on the floor, and he rose to his feet.

Kapetria was looking up at him with a kind of wonder but Derek stood out of respect. Marius had also risen and moved towards the door.

Slowly Kapetria rose. She folded the sheet of stationery back into fours and tucked it inside the neck of her dress. She did this carefully as if it had some ceremonial meaning. Then she gestured for them to wait. She moved soundlessly into the bedroom and came back with a large capped vial filled with blood.

Derek was amazed. He watched with misgivings as she put the vial in the Prince's hand.

"This is my blood," she said. "Give it to Fareed. He wanted it, didn't he? Well, this is a pure sample. I want him to have it, to make what he can of what he discovers in it."

The Prince slipped the vial into his jacket pocket and bowed. "Thank you," he said. He laughed. "This will make the mad scientist supremely happy, perhaps more than either of us can know."

Kapetria stretched out her arms to the Prince.

They embraced tightly, and they stood together like that for a long moment.

Then Kapetria said, "Let me tell Amel now through you that I understand," she said. "And I love you, and will never do you harm."

The Prince smiled, but it was no spontaneous innocent smile.

He nodded.

"And you, Derek, let me take you in my arms too," said the Prince. "You've been through too much suffering. Forgive us for what happened." They embraced, and then Marius offered his hand in farewell.

It was all right touching them, feeling their skin. He had not felt the frisson he'd been dreading. However powerful they were, they were suffused with a genuine human heat, and it was all right.

Yet now that they were going down the stairs, Derek felt a cruel little surge of joy that Roland was dead. Roland had been punished for what he had done to Derek. Roland had lost his "immortality." Roland was no more. That Arion had aided in the punishing of Roland, this too made Derek happy, but it felt very bad to Derek to be happy that any living creature was dead. It flashed through his mind suddenly that when they did get away to some safe place, they would all be joyful because death would be no part of it, and fear would be no part of it, and they would be a colony and a kindred in their own little world. A deep sense of Atalantaya came back to him, as it had last night all during Kapetria's story, of warm nights in Atalantaya when it seemed all living things were content and flourishing, and the music played on the street corners and in the little cafes and the flowers perfumed the air, and the tall thin trees with their yellowish-green leaves sent lacy shadows over the shining pavements, and the birds sang, all those tiny birds that lived under the great dome of Atalantaya, of which they'd not spoken a word, any of them, behold such birds.

Kapetria went to t

he window and moved back the white curtain. Derek stood beside her, looking down on them as they stepped out under the lamp above the sign of the inn and then both figures vanished.

Kapetria uttered a small delighted laugh. "Did you see which direction they went?"

"No," said Derek. "They simply disappeared."

"Now if we could only move like that."

She stood gazing down at the empty street. Derek could hear the dull echoing thrum of the music from the Chateau.

"It's Marius who rules, isn't it?" he asked in a whisper.