Jasra applauded softly, sampled the veggies, quickly ate more. Mandor smiled.

“Beyond that I draw a blank,” I admitted.

“Be a good boy and eat your vegetables,” she said.

I obeyed.

“Basing my conclusions concerning this remarkable tale solely upon my experience of human nature,” Mandor suddenly observed, “I would say that she wished to test her talons as well as her wings. I'd guess she went back and challenged her former master-this Victor Melman-and fought a sorcerous duel with him.”

I heard Jasra's intake of breath.

“Is that truly only a guess?” she asked.

“Truly,” he answered, swirling his wine in his goblet.

“And I would guess further that you had once done something similar with your own teacher.”

“What devil told you that?” she asked.

“It is only a guess that Sharu was your teacher-and perhaps more than that,” he said. “But it would' explain both your acquisition of this place and your ability to catch its former lord off guard. He might even have had a stray moment before his defeat for a wishful curse that the same fate attend you one day. And even if not, these things do sometimes have a way of running full circle with people in our trade.”

She chuckled.

“The devil called Reason, then,” she said, a note of admiration in her voice. “Yet you summon him by intuition, which makes it an art.”

“It is good to know he still comes when I call. I take it Julia was surprised, however, by Victor's ability to thwart her.”

“True. She did not anticipate that we tend to wrap apprentices in a layer or two of protection.”

“Yet her own defenses obviously proved adequate-at least.”

“True. Though that, of course, was tantamount to defeat. For she knew that I would learn of her rebellion and come soon to discipline her.”

“Oh,” I observed:

“Yes,” she stated. “That is why she faked her death, which I must admit had me completely fooled for a long while.”

I recalled the day I had visited Julia's apartment, found the body, been attacked by the beast. The corpse's face had been partly destroyed, the remaining features gory. But the lady had been the right size, and general resemblances had jibed. And she had been in the right place. And then I had become the object of the lurking doglike creature's attention, which had distracted me more than a little from the minutiae of identity. By the time my struggle for my life was concluded, to the accompaniment of approaching sirens, I was more interested in flight than in further investigation. Thereafter, whenever I had returned in memory to that scene, it was Julia dead whom I beheld.

“Incredible,” I said. “Then whose body was it that I found?”

“I've no idea,” she replied. “It could have been one of her own shadow selves or some stranger off the street. Or a corpse stolen from the morgue. I've no way of knowing.”

“It was wearing one of your blue stones.”

“Yes. And its mate was on the collar of the beast you slew-and she opened the way for it to come through.”

“Why? And why all that business with the Dweller on the Threshold as well?”

“Red herring of the first water. Victor thought I'd killed her, and I thought he had. He assumed I'd opened a way from the Keep and sent the heating beast after her. I guessed he'd done it, and I was irritated he'd hidden his rapid development from me. Such things seldom bode well. “

I nodded.

“You breed those creatures around here?”

“Yes,” she replied, “and I show them, too, in several adjacent shadows. I've a number who've taken blue ribbons.”

“I'll stick with pit bulls,” I said. “They're a lot cuter and better behaved. So, she left a body and a hidden corridor to this place, and you thought Victor had done her in and was setting things up for a raid on your sanctum sanctorum.”

“More or less.”

“And he thought she'd become sufficiently dangerous to you-as with the corridor-that you'd killed her?”

“I don't really know that he ever found the corridor. It was fairly well hidden, as you learned. Either way, neither of us was aware of what she'd really done.”

“That being?”

“She'd also planted a piece of tragolith on me. Later, after the initiation, she used its mate to track me through Shadow to Begma.”

“Begma? What the hell were you doing there?”

“Nothing important,” she said. “I mention it only to show her subtlety. She did not approach me at that time. I know of it, in fact, only because she told me of it later. She trailed me then from the perimeter of the Golden Circle back here to the Citadel. The rest you know.

“I'm not sure that I do.”

“She had designs on this place. When she surprised me, I was surprised indeed. It was how I became a coatrack.”

“And she took over here, donning a goalie mask for public relations purposes. She dwelled here for a time, building her powers, increasing her skills, hanging umbrellas on you-”

Jasra growled softly, and I remembered that her bite was worse. I hastened into a fresh area of speculation. “I still don't understand why she spied on me on occasion and sometimes threw flowers.”

“Men are exasperating,” Jasra said, raising her wineglass and draining it. “You've managed to understand everything but her motive.”

“She was on a power trip,” I said. “What's to understand past that? I even recall a long discussion we once had concerning power.”

I heard Mandor chuckle. When I glanced at him, he looked away, shaking his head.

“Obviously,” Jasra said, “she still cared about you. Most likely, a great deal. She was playing games with you. She wanted to rouse your curiosity. She wanted you to come after her, to find her, and she probably wanted to try her power against your own. She wanted to show you that she was worthy of all those things you'd denied her when you denied her your confidence.”

“So you know about that, too.”

“There were times when she spoke freely to me.”

“So she cared for me so well that she sent men with tragoliths to track me to Amber and try to slay me. They almost succeeded, too.”

Jasra looked away, coughed. Mandor immediately rose, circled the table, and refilled her goblet, interposing himself between us. At that time, while she was wholly blocked from my sight, I heard her say softly, “Well, not exactly. The assassins were... mine. Rinaldo wasn't around to warn you, as I'd guessed he was doing, and I thought I'd have one more shot at you.”

“Oh,” I observed. “Any more wandering around out there?”

“They were the last,” she said.

“That's a comfort.”

“I'm not apologizing. I'm just explaining, to clear our differences. Are you willing to cancel this account, too? I've got to know.”

“I already said I was willing to call things even. It still goes. Where does Jurt come into all this? I don't understand how they got together and what they are to each other.”

Mandor added a touch of wine to my own glass before returning to his seat. Jasra met my eyes.

“I don't know,” she said. “She had no allies when we fought. It had to have happened while I was rigid.”

“Have you any idea where she and Jurt might have fled?”

“No.”

I glanced at Mandor, and he shook his head.

“Neither have I,” he said. “However, a peculiar thought has occurred to me.”

“Yes?”

“Besides the fact that he has negotiated the Logrus and come into his powers, is it necessary for me to point out that Jurt-apart from his scars and missing pieces bears you a strong resemblance?”

“Jurt? Me? You've got to be kidding!”

He glanced at Jasra.

“He is right,” she said. “It's obvious that the two of you are related.”

I put down my fork and shook my head.

“Preposterous,” I said, more in self-defense than as a matter of certainty. “I never noticed.”

Mandor shrugged, very slightly.

“You want a lecture on the psychology of denial?” Jasra asked me.