"Depends on your definition of proper, doesn't it?"

"I suppose" He frowned at the knot. "Hold still."

He took a good hold and jerked; she hissed and punched him in the arm.

"Got it," he said smugly, and held up the broken piece.

"There were other ways!"

"Such as?"

Her face went blank. She leaned forward and picked up a manicure knife.

He held up a warding hand. "I concede. Next time I'll ask."

"Clever lad." She tapped his nose with the carved han- dle, then pointed to her back again. "I suppose, if I truly wanted to make an impression on the Committee, I should wear that . . . creation you so generously loaned me the last time."

"It certainly made an impression on Anheliaachicken feathers and all."

"Lidye, too. She looks at me like some sort of perverted form of life every time I enter a room."

"And you? What do you think of Lidye?"

"I think it's high time you asked."

He poked her between the laces. She squealed, and stepped backwardplacing her shoe's narrow heel squarely on his unshod toes.

She threw him a look over her shoulder. "Oops."

"Well?"

"I think that my first impression of Lidye was possibly as warped as hers of me. I don't trust the differences, but a smart person could impersonate the Lidye I first met.

That first Lidye could not impersonate the new one. A smart person won't stand in the way of logic. Right now, logic is on your side. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough." He began again on her laces. One- handed. With the other, he traced the curve of her back, the clearly defined muscles so unlike any other woman of his acquaintance. "On the other hand," he said, as he hooked the final section of ragged corset string and pulled it slowly free, "what kind of guarantee does this paint job come with?"

She turned into the circle of his arms.

"I've never thought to ask."

Words could not describe the chaos within his once- orderly office.

Mikhyel set his jaw against pointless expletivespoint- less because there was no one within hearing distance then closed and relocked the door on the mounds of unopened mail, rifled papers, and ransacked files.

He should have expected something of the sort from the moment he entered the eerily quiet outer office, where six clerks and two secretaries normally sat at their desks, busily, and generally quite chattily, handling the mountain of paperwork his amorphously defined position regularly generated.

The mountain now occupying his theoretically private, theoretically locked office.

Counting his anticipated moments of solitude in familiar surroundings as quite irretrievable, Mikhyel headed down- stairs to the personnel office to see what had become of his staff.

He didn't recognize the manager, nor she, him, at least by sight, but that wasn't surprising. Most of his staff had been with him for years, those who had not had been rec- ommended to him by those who had. Several people might well have occupied this particular office since he'd last crossed its threshold.

"They've all been reassigned. Representative dun- Mheric," the manager said, as she sent an aide off to pull the file packets. When the aide returned, the manager spread the pages out across the counter. "As you see."

His entire staffexcept Petworin and Kheroli, his oldest, most trusted assistantshad been reassigned to other se- nior officials within the building. Face neutral, he asked, "Whose order released them from my service?"

Her brow tightened, her expression became suspicious in addition to defensive. "Yours, sir, I assure you."

"I assure you, it was not."

She returned to her desk and brought back a single page, ordering the termination of all his assistants, stamped with the Rhomandi seal, signed with (he had to admit) an authentic-appearing signature (his own).

An upward glance discovered the woman's attention not on his face, not on the files, but on his hands as they turned the pages. More specifically on his wrists where the lace had fallen back, revealing the discreet bandages Raulind had placed on them following his session in Anheliaa's ring chamber.

He flipped the letter to the top of the stack, shook the lace cuffs back over the bandages, and abruptly left the office.

Damn the old woman, anyway. It had been years since she'd dared mark him with those lacquered talons. She'd shaken him, as had no doubt been her semiconscious intent, forced issues and roused emotions belonging to the past in order to disrupt his present.

He headed for Councillor dunTaraway's office, the nearest office housing one of his former staff. The bored-looking indi- vidual who answered the bell summons stared at him with a blank expression of nonrecognition, and insisted Paulis dunPaulis, the erstwhile junior clerk he'd traced here, was busy and not to be interrupted.

But Paulis himself emerged, dusty and disheveled, from the depths of a storage closet, shouting, "Miord Mikhy"

The rest of his name was lost in open-mouthed confusion.

A step closer, a narrow-eyed squint, and a flurry after a handkerchief and dust-covered glasses preceded a more cautious, "It is you, sir, isn't it?"

"I certainly hope so," Mikhyel answered.

"They told me you were" Paulis glanced around the room, crossed to an overstacked desk, and freed hat and coat from the wall-mounted peg beside it. "I'm taking a break," he announced to the room at large, and in an un- dertone, as he paused beside Mikhyel with his back to the room, "Best we not talk here, sir."

Mikhyel nodded to those throughout the roomwho were staring not at him, but at the no-longer tored-looking individual who had opened the doorthen preceded Paulis out the door.

"You are back, sir? For good?" was Paulis' hopeful query as he closed the door.

"I certainly hope so," Mikhyel repeated.

"They said you were gone, that your younger brother was to be Princeps, and that you'd gone off to Giephaetum with your intended. Iwe allwere afraid you were dead.

But I see that you aren't, and praise Darius' good name for that, but what now, sir? You aren't dead. You're here, not in Giephaetum. Do you want me back? Is that why you're here? Please, sir, say you do."

Mikhyel held up a hand to slow the eager onslaught, nodded his head in the direction of the staircase, and began walking in that direction.

"I can't promise you anything," he began, once they were safely in his office. "Not yet. I've a meeting with the Conduct Committee in" he glanced at the clock spinning in the center of the office, realizing in some shock "less than two hours. I was hoping there'd be something useful memos from Councillors, requestsin my office, but as you can see . . ."

The stacks on the desk drew both their eyes.

"If you're willing to help me out, I'll make certain your salary's paid, out of my own pocket if need be, and you'll have my sincere gratitude, but I honestly don't know, at this time, how long that position will last, or what the rami- fications of your leaving dunTaraway's offices so abruptly will be."

Paulis didn't answer immediately, a fact Mikhyel ac- cepted with mixed emotions. It was the barest of explana- tions, coming from a man returned from the dead, certainly nothing to inspire confidence and loyalty. But further expla- nation would, of necessity, have to wait, if he ever gave it.

"I have," Paulis said, at last and slowly, "only one ques- tion, sir. May I"

"Ask."

"Have they cause?"

"None," Mikhyel answered.

"Then I'll stay with you, sir," was the immediate answer, "if you'll have me."

"Thank you," Mikhyel said, relieved and unexpectedly moved by the young man's loyalty. "I promise you, when and if I'm free to explain the events of the past month, you will be among the first to know."

"I'd like to know, but it'll not weigh on my mind. You've never lied to usand I promise you, sir, we'd knowand if you say your conduct's been legal and ethical, well, I say, those who will be questioning it have a lot more to account for than ever you have, and I'd be willing to stand in court and remind them, if it would help."

Simply said. Quite pragmatically stated. And the thought sent chills down a prudent man's spine.

"Thank you . . . no. If we can just sort this mess, that will be more than sufficient help."

They hauled an extra table into his office and began a rough sort of the mountain. As they worked, Mikhyel asked, keeping his voice casual, "Why did you think I was dead?"

"When they showed up to give us the papers"

"They? Who told you to leave?"

"Not certain, sir. But Personnel said they had the right."

"Were they liveried?"

"Gold and green, sir. No badge."

Lidye's men. Mikhyel grunted. "Go on."

"They told meusyou were gone for a week or so, but that you were replacing us all, and we couldn't stay in the officenot even without pay, which we all wanted to do. We none of us believed you'd do it like that."

"It?"

"Give us the sack. You'd face us personally. Tell us why.

I thought . . . I was sure you were dead, and they just weren't saying. I thought the old witch" Paulis' lips tight- ened, smothering what sounded distinctly like a curse, and he ducked after escaping papers.

"Indiscreet, to say the least," Mikhyel filled in smoothly.

"Yes, sir," was the mumbled reply that rose from under the table.

"Not, I would think, a remark you would make if my unexpected appearance hadn't startled you deeply."

"No1 mean, yes. Sir. I think. Sir."

Mikhyel controlled an inclination to chuckle.

"Relax, Paulis. Time's running out. It's impossible to judge what might be useful for me to know. My word, I'll not hold anything you say against you in any way."

That only got a grunt.

"I'm honored, actually, to think that I've roused such loyalty in my staff. Or perhaps, it was only to escape the dusty closet that you came so eagerly to my side."

Which got a shy, bespectacled glance. "Actually, sir, it was that desk. Everything they had to think what to do with, landed on my desk. I'd have gone underground to tend the growth chambers rather than face that desk one more day."

"Oh," Mikhyel said, borrowing Nikki's most mournful tone.

Paulis' eyes went wide. "Sir! I was jok"

Mikhyel laughed, and after a startled moment, the young clerk joined him. It was a new and different feeling, and Mikhyel was tempted to allow the relaxed formality to ex- tend beyond the proposed hour. They were much of an age, and there'd been few enough individuals in his life he could call friend.

Tempted, but not foolish enough to act upon that temp- tation. A man who had control over another man's liveli- hood, owed it to the employee and himself to retain a mutually respectful distance, especially when other liveli- hoods might one day depend upon his ability to trust or discharge that same man.

He'd learned that particularly difficult lesson when he'd first escaped the Tower to his own offices here. At thirteen, there'd been many individuals, at all levels of employment, ready to take advantage of him and his childish innocence.

Fortunately for Mikhyel dunMheric and his City, Mikhyel dunMheric's childish trust had first been given to Raulind of Barsitum.

And Raulind's caution ruled him still.

"You could start," Mikhyel prodded gently, "by telling me what happened the day the web went down."

A rather blank look came into those bespectacled eyes.

"You weren't in that morning." The words came slowly, as if Paulis was trying to piece broken memories together.

"You'd left early the day beforetaken ill, they said, dur- ing the Appropriations Committee meeting."

Mikhyel nodded, acknowledgment of the statement with- out commitment. Deymorin had arrived during that meet- ing. And Nikki had been shot . . . in far-off Darhaven. It had been the first time they realized just how invasive their new gift could be. Staggering from Nikki's shock and pain, he might well have appeared ill.

"The next day, 1... we all... came in earlyin case you needed help, you know."

Thinking he'd be in early, to make up for time lost the previous day. Hoping, he supposed, to make a good impres- sion on him.

"Unnecessary diligence, I trust you realize," Mikhyel said.

"Perhaps, sir, but what with your older brother being gone, and you having to go Outside all the time, and still do the work here, well, we were getting worried for you, sir, and that's the truth of it."

"That was . . . thoughtful of you all," he said, which was all he could think of to say, embarrassed without quite knowing why.

"Yes, sir. Well, when you didn't show that morning, and we didn't hear, we were that certain you'd truly collapsed this time, and we were worried"

"About your positions here. I wish I could assure you otherwise, but"

"Sir!" the clerk protested.