the minutes before, told upon her. "My father was a court singer in Chicago, court poet to Duke Winslow. I was raised at the court. Four years ago, my father disappeared. Then Duke Winslow gave me to Miguel as a wife, but Miguel didn't want any wives. He adopted me instead. I've lived here ever since, as his daughter. As for my father, I suppose he's dead. He was blind, and—"

"Blind?" Kesley snapped instantly out of his mood of weariness as if a bolt of electricity had seared through him. "Did you say your father was a blind court singer?"

"Yes," she said.

Words came from nowhere and rumbled in Kesley's mind, words spoken on an Iowa farm in the deep, booming voice of van Alen the Antarctican:

"We have the treasure, now; we lack only the key to the box. Daveen the Singer, the blind man. The search for him continues."

Slowly Kesley raised his head. He blinked a little as his eyes encountered the flashing glitter of the girl's jewelry; then he looked at her eyes and at the lips whose cosmetic fluorescence remained in neat array despite his kiss. "Your father's name—was it Daveen?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes! But how do you know?"

"I don't. It's a name I've heard mentioned, a name that has something to do with me. Only ... have you ever seen me before?"

"I think so," she said slowly. "But I don't remember it. Were you ever at the court of Duke Winslow?"

"Never. But I recall you from somewhere. I—"

Dizzily, he looked away as a burst of sudden pain flooded his mind. He shuddered and felt sick.

"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"I—don't know."

"You look ill. You've gone completely pale." She put her arms around him as if to steady him, and her warmth sustained him through the moment of terror that had overtaken him. It was as if he had struck some particularly sensitive nerve, and the resonances were carrying agony through his body.

When it was over, he mopped the beads of cold sweat from his forehead. He looked up at her and saw that her glacial remoteness had been replaced by a sort of feminine warmth, almost a maternal 

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