"Not once."

Etty lets the obvious conclusions hang in the air for a moment.

"Do you want me to try loving you?"

"Absent other ways out. If you could."

"I don't know," she says, perching on the edge of her bed. "I've never tried."

"I don't think I'm unlovable. Although I've tried to avoid - attention - from men in my village, and doubt any women would have dared tell me if they were interested any more than I cared to chance whispering to them."

"Avoiding attention," she says. "Isn't that a dream."

"Perhaps we'll be out of here soon. Or if not me," she shrugs, "then - the next, I suppose, or the one after, if this goes on indefinitely, and you'd still have the chance to save yourself and all who'd have come after."

"I'll try with you," she decides. "You, I like."

Etty smiles a little bit. "Let me know if I can do anything in particular to help."

"Well, tell me about you," she suggests. "I hardly know anything about who you are. Maybe princes can fall in love with just a pretty face, but I think I need a little more to go on."

Etty sits on the floor and pulls her knees up to her chin. "I grew up in Astgabels. In Diotaland - are we even still in Diotaland? I have little enough sense of geography that I don't know how far he carried me. My mother died when I was small so it's just been me and my father, Carl. He's the sheriff. I kept house, but I had time to read - I was friends with the bookseller's daughter; she'd loan me things - and write. I mostly write about my own thoughts. I spend a lot of time in my head. That's what I wanted this for," and she lifts the blank scroll. "Especially since now I must fear forgetting - everything. Not just slippery brief thoughts."

"We're in Diotaland," she says. "Though my knowledge of geography isn't much better. I've only ever left the lake that once."

"I have not often traveled either. To a few neighboring towns, to buy things, not otherwise. But unworldly though I may be, I am puzzled about why the Kaiser calmly tolerates a baron who has been routinely kidnapping and draining the minds out of girls."

"Doesn't know, doesn't care, couldn't do anything about it if he did?" she suggests. "One of those, or maybe all three."

"Perhaps. Although - if it takes years to drain each, if the flock I saw is the second - there may have been more than one Kaiser since this began. I have heard that the royal court employs a sorcerer. Perhaps he is not a very good sorcerer, or the rumor was mistaken."

"Oh, it's been lifetimes," she says, nodding. "When the prince came, it was his mother who ruled. That must have been fifty years back at least. Maybe more like a hundred."

"You haven't been counting," observes Etty.

"What would be the point?"

"To know. To have an idea of how much the world outside the lake and the castle might have changed since the last time you had a look."

"I'm probably never going to see the world outside the lake again. I don't have anything to look forward to except my father's death or mine, and after the prince I was sure I'd never see either, until you showed up. Now - " She sighs. "I have no idea."

"Carl must be frantic. I'm sure I woke him when I screamed or he might have gone without noticing till dawn, but..."

"Is he likely to make trouble about you? The baron might have gone to kill him, if so."