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squatted—I’d better not call it a familiar—its black eyes taking in everything and everyone. Each group was focused on the other, so it was easy enough to slink into the shadows unnoticed. I’d blocked my mind as always, but it’s possible more than one of them knew I was there, crouched in the darkest corner. The bird probably knew.
    Conal certainly did.
    ‘Perhaps we could make this quick, Kate dear.’ Leonora gave the queen a smile that was both sweet and fantastically patronising. ‘It’s been a long day.’
    ‘Leonora, of course.’ Kate returned the smile, detail for detail. ‘I’ll keep this simple.’
    Lilith couldn’t resist joining in. ‘We won’t keep you long, Leonora. Politics can be so terribly burdensome…’ She didn’t add
at your age
, but the thought fairly reverberated off the antechamber walls.
    Griogair slumped into a carved chair, silent. He didn’t look at any of the women, only at Conal. Then he looked at his fingernails. And finally, the ceiling.
    ‘We’ve been waiting for you, Leonora,’ said Lilith. ‘I hope we didn’t hurry you back?’
    Leonora gave absolutely nothing away. I had to admire her.
    Lilith’s mouth tightened with annoyance, but she pretended she hadn’t been snubbed. ‘Kate has a proposal.’
    ‘We could have heard it in the hall last night, I’m sure,’ remarked Leonora. She extended her fingers to tickle her raven’s throat, and it croaked fondly.
    ‘It’s rather…delicate,’ said Kate.
    With his father’s gaze somewhere else, Conal took a casual step back, resting his back against a pillar. It brought me into his sight line, or it did when he turned his head a little to the left. Now he was looking straight at me. He couldn’t have
seen
me, in the suffocating darkness. But he Saw me, all right.
    The expression on his face made me shiver. Tentatively I lowered my block against him, and he slapped it brutally aside.
    ~
Fool. Greenarse. Stay out of sight
.
    ~
Sorry
…I began.
    ~
Out of sight
, he snapped. ~
Or die. Get your block back up
.
    I did as I was told. I felt ashamed, but brittle with curiosity. I didn’t dare move a muscle, not even to rub my temple where Conal’s bark had given me a throbbing headache, but I wouldn’t have wanted to. What, slink away now?
    Griogair was frowning at his beloved firstborn again, suspicious, but the women were still circling and biting like dogfish round bloody bait.
    ‘Kate, dear. Why should any proposal of yours need my help?’
    Shrugging lightly, Kate subsided onto a chaise. ‘Because I’m not strong enough, Leonora. Not without you.’
    That shut Leonora up. (Which alone made my risk worthwhile.)
    ‘Kate has an…
ambitious
suggestion.’ Lilith’s smile landed over Leonora’s shoulder: right on Griogair, in fact. ‘Have two such powerful Sithe ever coexisted at once, and at the height of their skills? There has to be a purpose to it, Leonora. And you have not just your own mind’s strength, but the backing of a
magnificent
dun captain.’
    Lilith wasn’t even pretending to smile at Leonora now. She was looking at my father as if she’d like to rip off his clothes with her teeth. As Griogair shifted slightly in his chair, I grinned to myself.
    So did Lilith.
    Kate was enjoying herself too, but with a sigh she combed back her hair with her fingers and got down to business. ‘So. Leonora. You know the Veil is nearing the end of its life?’
    That made my breath catch.
The
Veil? The
Sgath?
The strong membrane that kept our own world separate from the occult and dangerous otherworld? The only thing that stood between us and the despised creatures on its other side?
    And suddenly I knew what had wakened me: a disturbance in it. That’s what I’d felt, that cat-scratch on my spine. A shuddering jerk on the Veil, as if someone had tugged hard at it, tested its strength. It wasn’t something I’d felt before, because who’d do such a thing? I knew it, though; I knew it by instinct.
    The