Her few years at the Bowstring Inn had prepared Piper for the arduous task of cleaning the rooms of the castle. True, she had never seen such total chaos but when some of the guests had gotten particularly drunk, the rooms would soon look as if every possible natural disaster had torn through.

The invisible servants avoided Piper for the first few days, afraid that the wrath of the master would be incurred upon their unseen heads if they helped her. But after a while, and when there was no sign the master knew about it, the servants began taking the pile of garbage Piper left at the door and depositing it outside the castle walls in the barn where the master hardly ever went.

Piper began to learn to listen to the servants ... even calling them by name when she learned them. The servants warmed up to her and she found bread and jam and water by the side of her bed every night. It was a simple gesture of compassion and Piper appreciated it.

"How can she be surviving this long?" Raoul said, kicking a desk. It crumpled neatly under the blow.

"I do not know, master," the unseen man, whose name was Tovu, said. He was an obsequious little man, even 'Before'. Raoul knew it, but Tovu was companionship, however unbearable his personality.

"She must be stealing food from the kitchen," Raoul said, running a hand through his dark hair. "She should have been dead long ago."

"I believe the servants are helping her," Tovu said, happy to have finally ratted out his fellow men. It gave him a perverse pleasure to point out their shortcomings to Raoul, who would fly into a rage at the sound of a smile.

Raoul's eyes narrowed. "I shall see to this immediately," he said, storming out of the room, and flying down the halls to where Piper was innocently scrubbing the floor of a particularly nasty room.

He saw her on the ground and halted. She was whistling a merry little tune, one that he seemed to remember. He stopped for a moment in the doorway, his shadow thrown across the floor. Piper looked up at him, paused for a moment, then set right back to whistling and scrubbing as if she hadn't seen him. It infuriated him that she did not just stop. He would have to ask her to stop. He stood in the doorway, glaring down at her as she scrubbed. Finally he could not stand it any longer.

"Stop that infernal whistling!" he hissed. She looked at him.

"Oh, it is you," she said as if she had just realized he was there. He almost winced--almost!--at her words but caught himself just in time. His expression faded back into cold neutrality.

"I gave explicit instructions that you were not to leave your room," he said, his dark eyes glaring out at the room. He felt the servants shrink in fear.

She sat back and tilted her sad grey eyes up to him. "I am aware of your instructions," she said calmly. Her voice wavered imperceptibly.

"Yet you deliberately disobeyed them."

She swallowed and he saw her cheeks turn white. "I did," she said levelly. Her frank answer startled him. He stood staring at her, at a loss for words. She looked back at him and he saw fear in her eyes, a soft fear that struck him to his very bones. For a few seconds he was ashamed of that fear. For a few seconds he was almost human before the scars on his shoulder began to throb and the incessant howling of the wolf pounded in his skull and he turned the shame into anger.

"You are foolish, then," he said coldly. "A stupid, foolish little girl."

He took a few steps toward her. She stood and backed against the wall. The fear was very strong in her eyes.

"Such rash actions warrant a punishment," he said, and lightning fast, moved to strike her.

He had not been expecting her to duck, nor for his fish to connect with the wall in such a fashion that it cracked and the ceiling began falling slowly, carefully. He heard a scream, felt the stone hit his head and all went black.

Piper watched him crumple to the floor after the stone had hit his head with a glancing blow. He fell to the left which saved his life; the stone with which the castle had been made of crashed to the floor, his right leg buried beneath it. Had he stayed where he was, he would have been killed.

Coughing, Piper crawled over. With all her strength, she managed to pull the stones off of his leg. It was mangled and torn and she could see the faint white of his bone. She steeled herself.

"Help me bring him into my chambers," she ordered the servants, lifting his head and shoulders. "I need a wet cloth and some bandages and something to make a cast."

The servants complied and ran to find the respective items.

Piper, with the help of a few invisible men, managed to carry him into her room. Pulling back the bedcovers, she helped the men lay the master down. Piper bit her lip. She hoped she knew enough medicine to set the bone properly. Taking the wet cloth she had been supplied with, she bent in and set to work.