Maalech shook his head. "I'm staying at Cnoch na Niall. Marcello asked the Countess, and she agreed." He fell silent, then asked, a little more cautiously "This really do happen a lot then? With people being Pucked and showing up and everything?"

"It's happened a lot lately," he said. "What with the Puck mixin' everyone up and shufflin' them about. Or do you mean people gettin' hob-led and me mother takin' them in? Because that, not so much. Usually she just takes in old people with no relations and looks after 'em for a bit. Until they die, or get better. Or lambs with broken legs and things like that."

"I can see her doing that." Maalech smiled a little, shaking his head. "She took me in after all and told me the truth." He hesitated, but in the spirit of honesty he added "They say that when I'm older, I'm apparently an enemy of theirs. I wouldn't know, but Elaine pretty much told me so and accused me of a lot of things I don't remember. I don't think I would have taken me in, but... Meg did." He looked so very serious when he said that.

"She's like that." He shrugged. "You don't have anything to worry about. Mumma will look after you. It's like, a principle with her. No one gets hurt on her watch." Rather like Judith's principle of never leaving a man behind. He wondered if he would develop some odd motto when he got older.

"Nobody except invading armies" Maalech pointed out with a serious look on his face. "I like that."

"Well, they were about to hurt a whole mess of other people what couldn't fight back and didn't deserve it," he replied quite reasonably. "She just knocked enough of 'em down so that the good side weren't so outnumbered."

"Where I come from, there is a war going on. But nobody would think of poisoning the river, which is why we will lose in the end I suppose. Nobody knows how to do what it takes to win. People are just... I dunno... it's like they were waiting for the invaders to just grow bored and go home, as if they couldn't understand that the cities could fall and our world could end. It just wasn't in their mindset." He was as frustrated as any ten year old boy who had been on the losing side.

"Well, no one had thought of poisoning the river; everyone thought that Mother had gone mad," Starling replied. "So she did it on her own. And when they found out it worked, they helped her."

"People think that people who come up with new ideas are mad a lot of the time I think." Or senile. Suddenly he was wondering if Marcello had been right, about his old master not being as doddering as he had thought. "People just don't see the bigger picture" he complained. "It's all let's do things because that's how we always did it. If we did that, nothing would ever get done."

"Well, and again, Mother is mad." He shrugged, looking cheerful. "Try findin' that out the first time you throw out her collection of mouldy bread-crusts. They looked as if they needed throwing out," he added defensively, "but she acted as if I'd boiled her pet duckling."