Then, as though she had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fianna was in the doorway. The little gun in her hand made a hissing spurt of flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. He did not move again.
"The swine," Fianna said, without emotion. "Delgaun ordered him to wait, until it was sure that Kynon would not come down to talk to you. Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's aid."
She stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key she took from her girdle.
Stark took her slender shoulders gently between his hands. "Are you a witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?"
She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusk, her proud young face was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that he could see her eyes more clearly.
"I know all things because I must," she told him wearily. "And I think that you are my only hope—perhaps the only hope of Mars."
He drew her to him, and kissed her, and stroked her dark head. "You're too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds."
He felt her tremble. "The youth of the body is only illusion, when the mind is old."
"And is yours old, little one?"
"Old," she whispered. "As old as Berild's."