"Shut up!"

The voice in the third cell faltered, and died.

"That's better," called One Nine, lying back on his protesting couch with a sigh. "Damn you pointy-eared types…always with the singing…"

The mage in the first cell leant his pale head against the bars and said: "Why are you always so down on him, One Nine? At least he's cheerful."

One Nine, annoyed at being disturbed once again, replied, "Shut up!"

"A shame," said the mage, softly, "that you pelted folk only have a limited vocabulary."

One Nine snapped his jaws together with a toothy click and his hackles rose, but he chose to ignore the slight: Kiannon the mage was no elf-type to be baited.

The cellblock was part of the giant hospital complex on the colder northern side of the continent. Kiannon the mage, his casting arm in a sling, sat down on the bed and looked out of the barred window towards the sea. His fingers twitched, and blue fire curled from them briefly, climbing up his wounded arm and insinuating itself through the bandages until it was absorbed into his pale skin.

Kiannon was a necromancer, and as such bound by the Dangerous Mages Act of the Fourth Dynasty. His placement in a hospital cell was purely (the doctors said) for his own protection. People don't understand, Dr Simons had explained when Kiannon had been brought in on a stretcher, delirious from loss of blood. People think necromancy is all fiddling with dead bodies and making zombies out of the bits that are left over. They don't understand that you are healers too. They don't believe that necromancy is about life as well as death.

Kiannon, barely conscious, had not fully taken this in. It was only later, when he tried a simple pain-relief spell on himself, that he discovered the heavy magic-dampening field that had been placed on his room.

"Am I the only one who finds this suspicious?" he had asked the badly burnt werewolf (Dangerous Wild Animals Act, Third Dynasty) in the adjoining cell. "If they'd let me use my magic, I could be healed and out of their way within weeks. As it is - I could be here months…"

One Nine, the werewolf, nodded at the door of his cell. "Lined with silver," he had growled. "And these guys are supposed to be doctors."

Kiannon, hearing a soft voice murmuring in a continuous monotone from the third cell, had cocked his head curiously to one side and asked: "Who's that?"

One Nine, as if reminded suddenly, kicked the wall of his cell, hard, thunk-thunk-thunk- "Shut up!" -thunk-thunk-thunk- and the voice fell to whimpering quietly.

"That's an elf," the werewolf clarified. "Dunno what’s wrong with him. Think he's gone round the bend, personally. Never shuts up."

Kiannon, curious, had spent the first few days of his convalescence testing the limits of his powers against the dampening field. He could, with some effort, cast minor healing spells on his mauled arm. Not powerful enough to restore the severed nerves, but enough to gently coax the ragged skin into covering the raw flesh. He could also (although it gave him a headache) cast one of the basic-level mage skills, Sight, and peer into the adjoining cells to catch a glimpse of his fellow patients.

One Nine was a vast, furry shape in the early morning gloom. Almost constantly, the long tongue would loll pinkly from his jaws and lap at the bare, shiny patches of burnt skin that stretched across his torso and over one forearm. "Got caught out when I was drunk," he explained, when Kiannon asked. "House on fire."

The elf did not respond to Kiannon's hails. Sight revealed him to the mage: terribly thin, with luminous cat-green eyes and hair the colour of a raven's wing. A dark elf, Kiannon thought, risking a migraine by pushing his Sight, don't see many of those any more. Not since the Dangerous Immortals Act was passed a few years ago. The elf, sensing the use of magic, looked up with a keening cry like a day-old kitten, and Kiannon hurriedly withdrew.

The day after that, when the dispensing trolley came round to dole out medication, they orderlies also brought heavy cloth drapes to hang over the barred windows.

"What's this?" Kiannon asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell of One Nine's burn ointment being applied. "Why are you blocking out the light?"