...s desperate urgency met the need to be polite and formal.

"It's Borysko, I think he's been poisoned, Madame, he's lying outside the side gate and I think he's dying and the Healer won't listen to me!"

Grabbing his arms, Nyssa de Silva shook him fiercely.

"Calm down. He's been poisoned, you say? By whom?"

"I don't know, but you have to come, you have to come or he's going to die!"

The desperation in his voice, and the way that his normal sophisticated speech had collapsed under the weight of his urgency, got through to her, and without another word she swept out of her office, towing Drakon in her wake. The Healer didn't dare disobey the Assessor, and shortly afterwards they had reached the side gate and Borysko's crumpled form. He was still alive-just.

Drakon did not notice the brief flash of yellow that slipped through the open gate into the school, and nor did he remember to look for the cat he'd left to keep the warrior company.