Sebastian

first so it's dry before most other folk are up and about."
    "Are you implying that the wizards are lazy?" Harland sounded offended.
    "I'm sure that's not what she meant," Koltak said. "The servants are aware that we spend the early hours in meditation or study and don't usually leave our rooms."
    "That's true, sir," the girl said, looking earnestly at Harland. "No one's to come knocking to clean a room until after breakfast, so we take care of other cleaning chores until then."
    "I see," Harland said, a little mollified.
    "Besides," the girl added, "wizards don't use that stairway. Just the servants. He shouldn't have been using those stairs at all."

    "I think that's all we need to know," Koltak said. He glanced at Harland, relieved when the head of the Wizards' Council nodded in agreement.
    He led the girl to the door and opened it, not surprised to find the housekeeper hovering in the corridor.
    She was protective of her girls and had, more than once, publicly berated young wizards for not being able to tell a servant from a slut.
    As the housekeeper hurried off with the girl, Koltak closed the door and turned to face Harland. "What do you think?"
    Harland stared at the floor. Then he sighed. "The boy had no business on that stairway, but it is a shortcut from the apprentice quarters to the study rooms. So I think you were right about him having a braggart's tongue. He was probably on his way to tell some companion about delivering a message to me."
    "If it was nothing more than haste that had him rushing down that stairway, he would have seen the girl and the bucket, would have realized the stairs were wet." Koltak paused. "But the girl said he looked scared."
    Some undefinable look came and went over Harland's face. "You think a Dark Guide influenced the boy into taking fright?"
    "Don't you believe in the Dark Guides?"
    Harland lifted a hand, then let it fall. "If people believe there are Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart, how can there not be Dark Guides to provide balance, to grant the darker wishes of the heart?
    Personally, I think people make their own choices, good and bad. If they find comfort in blaming a hardship on something outside of themselves or that some force heard a wish and granted it, then let them believe."
    "And so a moment at the wrong place and time ends with a young man tumbling down a flight of wet stairs and breaking his neck?" Koltak said. Why was he arguing this, especially with Harland?
    "Yes," Harland said quietly. "Most likely we'll discover some classmates pulled a prank on the boy that frightened him more than they'd intended, and that, in turn, caused the accident that ended the boy's life this morning. I don't think we'll find anything more sinister than that, Koltak. No Dark Guides, no dark presence. Nothing but human weakness."
    "I know."
    As he went back to his own rooms, he couldn't shake the feeling that Harland was trying to hide something—that Harland didn't believe for one moment this morning's tragedy had been caused by human weakness.
    *
    Nigelle ran all the way to her walled garden. Slipping through the gate, she paused to catch her breath and embrace the glee she felt whenever she stood here.
    Secrets. Her garden was full of secrets. Dark landscapes carefully hidden so that a quick look by any of the Instructors would cause no alarm. Not that they were doing the usual inspections lately. Too many strange things had been happening.
    And she was the only one who knew why.
     
    She hurried to the far end of her garden, then looked around, impatient. Where was he? Surely he'd come. He had to come. He was so splendid, she couldn't stand not seeing him for a whole day.
    She'd tried sex with a couple of the boys studying to be Bridges, but she hadn't liked it much. But with him … It was devastatingly wonderful. Like drowning in sensations. Like being devoured while she crested again and again. It had gotten so that, if a full day went by without sex, she felt jittery, hot, like her skin was too tight and she needed to peel it off in order to breathe.
    She'd have sex with him every hour of every day until it killed her. That was how good it was.
    Laughing at herself for being so melodramatic, she rubbed her hands over her arms to ease the jittery, itching feeling.
    Where was he?
    And it wasn't just the sex, no matter how wonderful. He was showing her things the Instructors never would have taught her. And he had entrusted her with guarding the darkest,