Imoshen wished they would stop. Someone grabbed her. ‘Get your hands off me!’ Imoshen felt disoriented and nauseous with the sudden swing from deep sleep to awareness. ‘T’Imoshen...’ Merkah cried. ‘You’ve come back to us.’ She was lying on the day bed with a shawl thrown over her. Its silky material covered her bare breasts and that made her recall Reothe slitting the laces of her underdress. As Imoshen struggled to sit up a book fell from her lap onto the floor. Reothe’s gift. She picked it up, tucking it under the shawl. She searched the room. A dozen Ghebites and palace servants stood clustered around something near the window. Fear gripped her. Was Reothe hurt? ‘What happened?’ ‘He killed him,’ Merkah supplied unhelpfully. Imoshen’s world went grey. ‘Who?’ ‘T’Reothe killed the Keeper of the Knowledge.’ ‘No!’ Imoshen’s denial was instinctive. Reothe would not do that. The Keeper was a defenceless old man. But she could not afford to defend the rebel leader.
