"I have come here in haste seeking the answer to 1 question from you."
	"Yes, Friend Ince? Ask me that question."
"Why did you ask me to carry the Septa cube?"
	"How curious that you should ask that."
"It may grow more curious if your answer does not strike the spark of truth."
The wunpaqs rapped their feet in rapid chorus. They might have threatened me but for all I knew they could have been cheering me on being out of patience at present with the Sem. As I was. I suspected her, I suspected her great cleverness and her secrecy. Perhaps I should not have. Perhaps I would not have at an easier passage of my life but at present I had little time. I had Cheryn and Prescott to see to. In order to do that adequately I needed to discover precisely what had happened to the Septa cube and confirm my belief that Septa had caused the bruises and the pain in my side and the difference which had been for a time inside my mind.
Sem Partoldi parted her hands offering the pink palms to me. "Ince, my friend, my rare partner in games, can you have been through such that has made you forget?"
"Why do you think I have been through anything?"
	"An Eoeun failing. Anyone venturing outland of Eoe must face much, always. It's harrowing to see."
"Unh." I waited.
	Seeing this she went on, "I wished for you to give my little sad friends a ride home. They had been abducted and were long, so long, in returning. Have you forgotten?"
"No. You spoke with them."
	"Most assuredly and most repeatedly."
"How?"
	The red eyebrows wriggled in surprise. "But did they not speak with you?"
"Not in any way I could sense. Not by any sense. Not by any means. I tried initiating contact in every way; I tried ignoring them. I then considered that you had placed a joke with me on the carc and that this was a cube, merely. An empty cube. A carnival cube."
	The Sem made a tiny high noise of distress. "You did not discard the cube, Friend Ince? Please reassure me that you did not do this to my little Septa friends."
"I did not toss the cube from the mount. But I did not return it to Septa." I watched her searching for any lack of surprise or any clever seed within her surprise. I could define none. She looked startled, dismayed, or as much as she could having presented for too long the public person who had seen all, at least once.
	Her voice was clotted with hurt. "You promised. Friend Ince, you promised and believing in your promise I did so inform the Septa."
"Did you relay to them all that I asked you to? Did you tell them of my need to see to Mirhveda, that they might have to remain in Mirhveda City for a brief time?"
	"I did, Ince, yes, I surely did."
"How?"