Artemisia felt herself blushing. At first she was inclined to mind, but then she remembered that to see a blushing woman in a courting couple was expected. She raised her fan to her face to be sure that it was seen.

"I hear," she murmured behind it, "there is a ball to which I have not been invited."

"Really?" the Crescent Chancellor drawled. "Then I expect that I have not been, either."

"Oh, but I think you have, sir. Or what is that letter in your pocket, which you were not eager to let me see?"

And, indeed, the Crescent Chancellor's ringed hand flew to his inner pocket, but only for a moment.

"Oh, that. Do you think it is from some woman?" he said loudly. "God love the puss, she's jealous already." He looked around the table for confirmation; the men guffawed, and Artemisia blushed in truth.

But she got it out of him in the end, when they were nearly alone, with her maid a discreet distance away. It was a ball, a ball comprised of rogues, the invitation said, but a ball nonetheless, and was she not an ornament at any ball? Her star shone too brightly for such low company-very well, then, she would cover it with a mask. She'd heard of married ladies who went to such places for a lark, suitably disguised, and were she and my lord not to be married so soon as made no never mind? As for rough company, well, it was soon to be his life's job to protect her, and what better place to test it than at a roguish ball? Ferris laughed at that, and allowed that if he could not protect her, no one could. But this would require more discretion than he feared she was mistress of, to quit the house without even her maid's knowledge. And what would her parents think of him if they found out?

Pooh, she said, her parents thought he'd hung the moon. If he wouldn't take her, she'd find another who would. There's Terence Monteith, quite mad for her, everyone knew he'd been drooping like a willow ever since she'd put on Ferris's engagement jewel...or her cousin Lucius Perry, he'd do anything for her.

Well, said His Lordship, we can't have you imposing on discarded lovers or worse yet, relatives. I see it is my duty to escort you safely there and back, for one last little girlish adventure.... If she could contrive to be at her own garden gate when the clock struck nine that night, he would be waiting, cloak in hand.

When he left, Artemisia was breathless with excitement. Such a victory, to bend such a man to her will!

She would not mind being married to him at all, if this was a taste of things to come. ON THE NIGHT OF THEROGUES'BALL,BETTY LAIDout my nicest suit, the blue shot with crimson, and a new shirt with ruffles and a little gold edging, and low boots neatly cuffed. Just because I had no ballgown, I need not go looking like the dog's offal! I was going to the ball, and I was going as the Mad Duke's niece who studied the swordsman's art and wore a swordsman's clothes. What was the point of trying to hide it? Sooner or later it would all come out. It might as well be now. And if I found a mask to wear, he would only tear it off. I did have my new scabbard, though.

Marcus was delighted. He had retired to his room with a book of essays and a bowl of apples, with instructions to me to enjoy myself because he hated these things and not to let the duke do anything really stupid.

I waited in the front hall for some time, trying not to fidget with my sword. Nothing looks stupider than a swordsman who can't keep his hand off his tool, the master had said, and although Phillip Drake had laughed uproariously when I repeated that to him, I planned to stand by it. Finally I gave up and went and knocked on the door of the duke's chamber. Although the sun was nearly setting, the world bathed in its last colors, my uncle's rooms were shadowy and candlelit, the heavy curtains drawn. He still sat before the glass, his long hair falling all about him, sleek and new-brushed. His eyes looked very large, their color bright, gazing into the glass in which he saw me behind him. There was something about him of the enchanted prince, in the pallor of his skin or the brightness of his eyes, the surprising fineness of his hair and the etched bones of his face. He wore only plain black linen, over a very white shirt whose edges reported crisply at neck and wrists.

"Nothing too gaudy," he said to me in the mirror, "for a Rogues' Ball." But his right hand dazzled with rings. His valet combed the hair back from the duke's face and bound it with a velvet ribbon.

My uncle rose, and looked down at my head, and further down to my toes. He nodded; I was all right.

"Stay close to me," he said. He wore not even a dagger. The gold rings, I supposed, were his weapon.

And the plain black linen was exquisitely tailored; when he turned, I saw all the tiny folds and tucks stitched up and down the front.

He stumbled into a stool, and flung his hand out to the bedpost for support, and steadied himself there.

"Stay close to me," he said again. "Things aren't quite where they should be."

"My lord," said his valet, "do you wish a draught of something steadying?"

"No," said the duke; "what for?"

I followed him down the stairs, where he was wrapped in a heavy cloak. At the door, a palanquin was waiting. He got through the curtains and into his seat very slowly, and lay back with his eyes closed. "Is it summer?" he said. "It's very warm."

I didn't answer; he wasn't listening to me anyway. When we were over the old bridge, a carriage attended. It took us slowly along the river. Now I could see all the other people going our way, mostly on foot-Riversiders, all decked out in their tasteless best, like painted poles at a Spring fair. Some impudent rascal rapped at the side of our door, demanding a lift-our footman beat him off, but the duke put a restraining hand on my arm, although I hadn't moved but to look. "Easy," he said. "Not yet."

The guildhall was so brightly lit inside that from the outside its tall windows shone like beaten gold. I wasnot the duke's only guard; other of our men had ridden outside the carriage, and it took the entire escort to clear a path to the guildhall steps. But they left us at the door. The duke put a hand on my shoulder, balancing. A huge footman in a livery all of ribbons came forward. He looked at my uncle. My uncle looked at him. Clearly something was supposed to be happening but wasn't. I wondered just how awful things would get if the footman tried to throw us out.

"We were invited," I said nervously, but nobody even looked at me.

My uncle spoke, finally, to the footman. "What a getup. You look," he said slowly but clearly, "like a booth at a fair."

"Ah," said the footman. "You've got that right. Shall I announce you, sir?"

"Why bother? Everyone knows who I am."

And so we entered the Rogues' Ball.

I recognized Sabina only because I didn't think our hostess would allow any other woman at her ball to be reclining in a nest of red velvet at the heart of a huge golden shell. Anyone, I suppose, was free to wear pink gauze and a necklace of the biggest pearls I'd ever seen. The shell was on a platform at the center of the room; all the activity swirled around her. The duke was staring hard at it and blinking. She caught sight of us and called "Alec!" and waved a napkin in our direction. As we drew nearer she shrieked, "Black! You woreblack to my party!"

"Get me a drink," my uncle muttered, but he wouldn't let go of my shoulder.

By now, of course, everyone was staring at us. "Isthis your newboyfriend ?" Sabina demanded. We were now at the foot of the shell. It was raised above the throng, supported by carved horses with fishes'

tails rising from the waves. It reminded me a lot of a serving platter for a banquet table, and I'm not sure she didn't mean it to.

"No, dear," he replied; "this is one you'd find very hard to steal from me. Unless youlike unnatural blondes?" he asked me; but, not waiting for an answer, told her, "This oneguards my body, instead of trying to rob it of my vital fluids."

Sabina threw back her head. She did have a glorious neck. "Brilliant. We all wondered when you were going to think of that. Well, then, I won't worry about your getting snuffed at my party. You're so considerate, you plan for everything."

"Shove over," he told her; "I want to sit down."

The pink gauze shifted in our direction. "No. You'll ruin my effect."

"Shove over, I said; you've got the best view."

"I will not."

She was getting mad, and I wasn't Marcus. But I tried. "My lord duke," I said, "don't you want to go see who's here?"

"Oh, good god," said Sabina. "This isn't a boy at all. It's the baby chick poor Ginnie was telling meabout. Send her home, Alec, what's wrong with you?"

"I can fight," I said staunchly, to my surprise.

"Well," she replied, "keep your uncle out of trouble, or you're going to have to."

"I am staying out of trouble." He arranged himself on the steps to the shell. "How's that? And don't say you won't get a huge bang out of having the Duke Tremontaine sitting tamely at your feet. People will talk for days."

"No, no, no!" She smacked him with her fan. "Not only are you ruining the effect, but people always want things from you. I am not having my lovely seashell turned into a queuing for petitions for better drains on Tulliver Street."

"I'll stand guard," I said. It seemed like the safest place to be.

"I'm sure you will, angel," she purred, "but I want you to have a good time. Both of you. Alec, dearest darling, do go enjoy yourself and pick up some pretty man, and then you can tell me all about it tomorrow. I'll let you be the very first one to call on me, I promise, and we'll thrash the whole thing out together first thing. Will you do that for me? Please? Oh my goodness, who's this dashing blade?" This last was addressed, not to us, but to a masked young man in very tight breeches and an open collar. He was awfully good-looking, and he was leaning over us to kiss her hand.

"Oh god," my uncle groaned, "dinner is served. Get me out of here."

I took his cold hand, and led him into the throng.

LADYARTEMISIAFITZ-LEVI WAS AFRAID THAT HERmask was slipping. Nervously she tugged at the ribbons that held it in back. If only she hadn't had to sneak out without her maid's help; Dorrie would have been able to pin it more tightly into her hair. Unlike every other party she'd ever been to, here there was no room to retire to with ladies' maids standing by to mend tears and turn up stray locks of hair. She was on her own. "Don't worry," her escort breathed in her ear, "they'll all think you are my ladybird, isn't that the point? Put your head up, dearest, and laugh. Look like you're having a good time, or they'll know you're not."

"But I'm afraid it will come loose-"

"My dear." Her intended ran his finger carefully along the place where the bottom of the mask ended and her cheek began. She felt a chill at the base of her spine: excitement, or fear, or that thing the older girls talked about? "If I see any sign of it coming loose, I will be the first to help you hide your face. Do you think I want the world to know my wife was at this affair? No, my little madcap puss," and his arm was around her back now, holding her to him, his hand cradling her hip through the heavy layers of her skirt, "this will just be our little secret, our first adventure together. Isn't that what you wanted?" and she had to say, "Yes, of course it is."

The room was aswirl with people. It was like being in a pool of water, in a river that moved against her.

Someone knocked into her and Artemisia gasped reflexively, "Oh! Excuse me!"

But her escort squeezed her waist and chuckled, "That's no way to go about it. Not here, not with thesetypes. The next time that happens, you jab out with your elbow and say, 'Watch it, jackass!'"

She giggled nervously. "I can't!"

"Yes you can...try it." Without warning, he swung her around so she ran into a short man whose hands were full of pie. "Watch it, sister!" the man sputtered through a mouthful of pie, and she said, "Watch it, yourself," and though she spoiled the effect by giggling, he told her she had done well.

ABAND STRUCK UP IN ONE CORNER OF THE ROOM.It was the kind of music you could hear in any Riverside tavern, fiddles and ratchety pipes and drums, and everyone loved it. The Riversiders and University students knew the tunes and the steps that went with them and threw themselves into the dance, right at home. The nobles, some dressed in rags and some in ball regalia, but all easily distinguished by their cleanliness, started casting about for likely looking girls to dance with. I was glad my clothes ensured that no one could take me for one. I passed behind, the dark duke's bright shadow, as he drifted looking for amusement.

His eye was caught by a group of men dressed in brightly fluttering tatters. They had braided ribbons into their hair, twined them through the careful rents in their shirts and sleeves and breeches. Some had tied in little bells; you couldn't hear them above the noise, but they looked nice.

"What ho!" one of them cried, roguishly, I guess, to the crowd. "We are the Companions of the King!

Come join us in our devilish revelry!" They seemed to be trying to arrange people into a pyramid against the wall behind them. A red-haired man had a food-stained tablecloth laid out on the floor and was drawing on it with a burnt stick.

The duke moved towards them as if their colors were flame on a cold night. One spotted us and shouted, "Oh, joy! It's darkest Night-"

"Or Nightmare," said the redhead, "allied with Temptation. Just what we need to complete the tableau.

Do join us, please, and we'll make you immortal."

"I am already immortal," the duke said, a little thickly. "Have you discovered a new method?"

"Art, sir, art is the medium! As it ever was. Art renders immortality through the medium of allegory. Twin art with morality, and there is nothing to offend anyone, yet something for all tastes."

We looked up at the artists' tableau. It was a complicated twist of people arranged reaching for fruit, for wine, or for each other. "It doesn't look very moral to me," my uncle said.

"Exactly."

"What my friend means, severe and beautiful one, is that in the interest of revealing virtue, we mask it in vice."

"Didn't Placid say that?" asked the other.

"No, I said it," snapped the red-haired artist. "It is a grand concept. A masked ball of virtue, the obverse of roguery, disguised as the very thing it seeks to cast down." The duke actually smiled. "Very apt." He gestured to the pyramid. "And this represents...?"

"Man's heedless quest for Pleasure, of appetites temporal and carnal. See how in their striving each man treads upon the other? And how the Pleasures reach out mindlessly to tempt us?"

I certainly did. One of the Pleasures, a man all tucked up behind another one, untwisted his arm, encased in peacock blue silk, to wave it languidly at the duke. I had seen his sleek head before, and this time I knew where.

It was Artemisia's friend, and the Mad Duke's as well. I was dying to say something clever to my uncle about that particular beauty being one of the pleasures he'd already enjoyed-but if I hoped to find out more about the mysterious young man who visited nice young girls on the Hill and also worked at Glinley's, I would have to be chary. I would discover his name tonight; that would be my quest, and if I was very lucky, my uncle would not know of it.

"So in the interest of illuminating virtue," the artist was saying, "it is possible, indeed necessary, to show vice in all its manifestations. It will be a tremendous crowd-pleaser."

"Right," said the duke. "Well then, get out your sketchbooks and get started, because I want to be at the top, and I probably won't last long."

As he handed me his empty glass, I recalled my duty. "Oh, no. I really don't think you should-"

"You are my swordsman, not my governess," the duke said sternly. "If someone attacks me with anything sharp and pointed, you kill them. Otherwise, leave me alone."

There was no use arguing with him. If he broke his leg, someone could probably set it.

The duke set one finely shod foot on the thigh of a crouching earth spirit and began his ascent. I'd climbed some trees in my time, and clearly so had he. But the trees didn't usually shudder and giggle underfoot. The red-haired artist wasn't really helping, rushing in and patting people who were falling out of pose back into place. He nearly got kicked in the teeth by a ticklish Temperance. A couple of the others began sketching madly. It looked like roiling clouds of form all over their paper, not like people at all, but I saw they were drawing a sort of map of the scene. I'd never seen anything like it, and I was so fascinated that I missed the downfall of the allegory. I heard my uncle shout, "You!You-" and then the voices became indecipherable, and it was all a mess of arms and legs and skirts and hair and ribbons and shrieks and laughter.

The duke crawled out from underneath the heaving throng. He pointed into it. "Kill him," he said. "He bit me."

"I don't think I-"

"My lord, I beg your pardon." A bright head with rosy cheeks emerged from the sprawl. "I mistook you for a most delicious fruit."

"An easy mistake for anyone to make," the duke said smoothly. "Do I know you?"

I knew him. It was the horrible Alcuin. ARTEMISIA HAD A STITCH IN HER SIDE.SHE REACHEDacross the dancers for Lord Ferris, but his hand seemed to slip away from hers as if pulled by the awful music, the straining strings. A stranger with garlic breath had his arm around her waist, and she was close to tears. The dance was not one she knew. There were no steps, it was just leaping back and forth in time to the music, with your partner swinging you this way and that and handing you off to someone else at a signal, but she did not know what it was. All sorts of men had had their hands all over her, and it was too much, really too much, but every time Lord Ferris came in view he smiled brightly at her and said, "Enjoying yourself, sweetheart?" It was all that kept her from tearing herself out of the crowds and running for home.... The garlic went away and she smelt a familiar scent, looked up and realized it was Lord Ferris with his arms around her, and she leaned into his chest and whimpered up at him, "I'm thirsty."

"Poor kitten," he said. "Of course you are. What a treat you were there, a jewel ornamenting the arms of some of the roughest men in town." He was holding her as close as some of them had, closer than he had ever held her before. But at least they were off the dance floor, headed for a quiet corner away from the worst of the brawl. "What shall I feed you now, my sweet pet, wine? Or maybe beer, in the spirit of the evening."

"Water," she said, "or a fruit coolant."

But he went on as if she had not spoken, "I'm not sure she's serving wine tonight; they'd guzzle it like rough ale, these types, and there would be chaos. But don't worry; I've brought this." He drew a flask from his jacket, and raised it to his lips. When he lowered it, a little moisture clung to them. "Taste?" he whispered.

"What?" Artemisia was baffled.

He leaned his face down to hers, so that his wet lips were nearly touching hers. "Put out your tongue,"

he said, "and taste."

No one knew where she was. No one here would care what he asked her to do. They were in a corner where no one could see them. Closing her eyes, she slowly put out her tongue and tasted burning brandy and the skin of his lips.

"Ah!" His sudden hot breath shot right into her lungs; she gasped and tried to pull back, but his arms were tight around her.

"Ah," he said again, and his mouth was all over her, her lips, her chin, her ears, her neck, her chest where the gown was cut as low as she had dared.

"My wicked girl," he said, "how I adore you." Artemisia knew she should be pleased, but she was frightened. His hands were everywhere, too, rumpling her skirts, pushing at her bodice, pinning back her hands while he kissed her.

"Please," she breathed, "I-"

"Oh, do you?" he growled. "Do you? Of course you do, of course you do, so do I-"

"No!"

She said it, she heard herself say it, but he did not seem to. He did not seem to hear anything except hisown hot breath, which was terribly loud in her ear while he did things to her skirts until there was nothing at all between him and her, really nothing whatsoever, and although she wailed in distress it only seemed to make him hotter and he forced her up against the wall and rammed himself into her over and over and she had to stop thinking because there was nothing else to do until he let out a revolting noise and draped himself over her all sweaty and said, "Couldn't wait, could you?"

She was shivering as if her whole body would shake to pieces.