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  It was a runner in browns, her dark hair and skin proclaiming her one of the children adopted by the Family rather than Family-born. She actually had to look up to meet his eyes, a rarity. “Message, sir.”

  She handed him a slip of folded paper, probably passed off to her by one of the quarterguards. Mikael glanced at it, thanked her, and then shut his door before he unfolded the paper to read it.

  Blue Receiving Hall, at nine, it said, in Dahar’s cramped handwriting.

  Mikael took a deep breath. He was being called up to the king’s household.

  That surely had something to do with Shironne. The Anjir girls and their mother were being housed in the king’s household for now. At least that had been the plan before he and Cerradine left to pursue Shironne. So he bathed, dressed in his best set of blacks, and made sure his hair was combed adequately before he headed up to Three Above where the royal household dwelled.

  The palace was a stunning creation of white marble with large arched windows. Light from the stained-glass windows along the inner courtyard glimmered like a rainbow on the beige wool and silk carpets. The halls were draped in old tapestries, battle scenes worked in deep tones interspersed with gold threads. The arched hallways were lit by gas sconces now, although the old iron lanterns had been retained and were, on rare occasions, lit. The king’s wing of the palace, not just his household on Three Above, but all the meeting rooms and halls and offices, were far finer than the wing Mikael inhabited along with other members of the Daujom.

  As he crossed the main entryway’s color-spangled carpets, he thought of the gray walls of the Fortress below this palace. The Lucas Family lived in a place without sunlight, without tapestries or stained-glass windows to brighten it, a very different world than this palace. The Anvarrid had built this palace atop the Fortress, not to erase it but to solidify their ties to the Family. At the east end of the palace, a wide marble staircase ran down into the earth. A gray stone stair rose of from the depths of Below to meet it, a physical reminder of the treaty that joined the Anvarrid and Family together.

  Mikael drove that fancy from his mind, selected the correct stair, and headed up.

  According to the bells ringing in the western dome, Mikael arrived at the door to the Blue Receiving Hall exactly on time. The unfamiliar quarterguard nodded politely enough—there had been a time when the quarterguards all despised him—and she held open the door for him. Mikael stood in the doorway, waiting to be invited over the threshold.

  “Come on in, Mikael,” Dahar said from where he stood next to one of the chaises.

  Mikael glanced about the room. This was a hall that the royal household used for personal guests, not for state functions. More private—only Dahar and Madam Anjir were there. Against the room’s blue-painted walls and its fine furnishings, all embroidered in blues and golds, they were a stark contrast. Dahar wore his black Family uniform. On the other side of the room, Madam Anjir wore mourning for her husband, a plain white tunic and long petticoats, no jewelry save for a silver bracelet with bells on it—the one that allowed Shironne to hear where she was. Madam Anjir looked forlorn there, perhaps a bit lost, putting Mikael in mind of poetry he’d not read since he was a young man. He could have sworn the two had been arguing before the quarterguard opened the door. The ambient in the room had that feel to it. He had no pretensions of being able to write poetry, but if there had been anything he’d seen in his life that deserved it, this did—brother and sister, arguing.

  He turned toward Madam Anjir and bowed from the waist. “Madam, I am honored to attend your summons.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but Dahar spoke first. “Oh, don’t be formal,” he snapped. “It’s tiresome.”

  This from a mentor who often told him he should remedy his lax comportment around other Anvarrid. Mikael took a breath and let his annoyance seep away on his exhalation. No use holding on to it. “How may I help you, Madam?”

  “I wished to thank you,” she said softly. Her lower lip quivered. “If you hadn’t come . . .”

  Please don’t let her start crying. He thought calm into the room. “Madam, I’m sure that Messine and Pamini would have managed to . . .”

  Her eyes lifted, vexation in them now. “I am not talking about their part in keeping us safe,” she said. “I want to thank you for your part in this, Mr. Lee. You went after Shironne when no one else was certain how to find her, and for that I will always be grateful.”

  For a moment, his mind went blank. How could he explain that there hadn’t been any other road open to him? If Dahar had ordered him to stay at the palace, he wouldn’t have been able to do so. He would have taken a coach from the royal stables or, failing that, gone on foot. Nothing could have kept him here. But he couldn’t say any of that because her daughter was a child, no matter what any of them thought, and therefore off limits. “Madam, I . . .”

  When he couldn’t find the right words, she came across to where he stood, the scent of patchouli—no, sandalwood—drifting with her. She laid her slender hands on his cheeks and looked down to meet his eyes. “My daughter doesn’t have secrets from me, Mr. Lee,” she said softly. “I know who you are, and what you represent. I’ve seen for myself that you’re worthy of my trust. And my daughter’s.”

  That statement covered a great deal of territory. Mikael felt his cheeks flushing. There were times when having fair skin was a disadvantage. “Thank you, Madam.”

  She stepped away from him. “I was married off very young to a man I despised. I want nothing more than for my daughters to make their own choices, and to be happy with whomever they chose.”

  Mikael concentrated on keeping his emotions blank, an imperative when this topic could get him in so much trouble.

  “He can’t speak about such things, Savelle,” Dahar said from beside the sofa where he still stood. “It’s not permitted. Not since she’s being placed in the Family.”

  Her head turned halfway toward her brother. “I was speaking of my marriage, Dahar, not anything else.”

  She looked back at Mikael then, long fingers toying with her silver-belled bracelet. “I’m still learning the rules, I’m afraid. I do understand the logic of maintaining a façade, Mr. Lee, even when it goes against my inclinations.” She swept a hand downward to indicate her white tunic and petticoats as she said that, her proper mourning garb, donned to honor a husband she’d just admitted she’d despised.

  He nodded his head once, the best thing he could do since even discussing the woman’s daughter was forbidden. “Is that all, Madam?”

  Her lips pressed together in a thin line, and he felt the edge of her frustration. Not with him, he decided, but with the situation. He wished reassurance at her, wanting her to know his intentions were honest, and she smiled slightly, her eyes downcast. “Thank you, Mr. Lee. That was all I wanted.”

  Mikael stepped back and left, walking out of the receiving hall. Almost as soon as he’d stepped over the threshold, he spotted Eli coming along the hallway.

  The young man looked impatient, as always. He was part Anvarrid like Mikael, but it showed differently on Eli. His dark blond hair had an ash tone but didn’t seem to be turning brown like Mikael’s wanted to. Eli’s olive skin looked Anvarrid, though, and his eyes were brown. He also had the height commonly associated with Anvarrid, more than a hand taller than Mikael already. The First of his yeargroup, he’d been chosen by the yeargroup’s sponsors as the best of them. As he was often called Perfect Eli behind his back, it seemed he lived up to that expectation most of the time.

  Eli was accompanied by one of the other sixteens—Tabita. Tabita properly averted her pale eyes, even though she knew Mikael. That didn’t give her permission to speak with him.

  She was one of a handful of Jannsen children he’d sent here from Jannsen the year before, the eldest of them, and a powerful sensitive. She had that extreme paleness he mentally associated with the Jannsen—nearly white hair bound back in a single runner’s braid, lashes and brows so light
that they seemed to disappear against her skin. She was small, like Shironne, with a deceptively slight frame. Eli claimed, however, that the girl excelled at most combat skills, and thus had risen through the ranks of the sixteens quickly. She was now Eli’s Second among the girls, just as Gabriel was among the boys.

  She’s here to be introduced to Shironne.

  Since Eli was also Mikael’s swordsmanship student, Mikael actually was allowed to speak to him. “What are you doing up here?”

  “We’ve been summoned,” the young man said in his deep voice. “Do you know why, sir?”

  Mikael wasn’t certain he was allowed to tell Eli, but it was likely he’d already guessed. “The king’s niece is going to be placed in the Family, I believe.”

  “And she’s a sixteen.” Eli’s mind reflected a touch of smugness. He turned to Tabita and said, “I told you so.”

  She returned Eli’s gaze, her face expressionless.

  Mikael pressed his lips together. Eli enjoys being right a bit too much.

  Tabita glanced at Mikael’s face, then averted her eyes. She’d probably caught his thought. Not the words like Shironne would have, but the idea behind it, a thing that Eli in his deafness would never catch. “She’s a touch-sensitive,” Mikael warned the duo, a fact that had been whispered through the Fortress the previous month anyway. “That will require special considerations, I expect.”

  As he expected, Mikael felt a flare of irritation from Eli, although it was quickly dampened. The younger man managed to keep the emotion from reaching his face. Shironne wouldn’t miss it, though.

  Special considerations were not something Eli had patience for.

  Mikael hoped Eli would remember he was dealing with a member of the House of Valaren, even if Shironne hadn’t yet been formally acknowledged. She would sense every flicker of annoyance and impatience Eli aimed toward her. And there was little Mikael could do about that without admitting he had a relationship with a child. “I’m sure Dahar would appreciate your patience,” he tried anyway.

  “What were you doing up here, sir?” Eli asked.

  “The king’s sister asked to speak with me.” He wasn’t going to elaborate. That would get him into trouble quickly.

  “Ah, then,” Eli responded. “I hear you.”

  Clearly Eli had lost his interest in this conversation. Mikael nodded to him and Tabita once, and then walked past them down the hallway toward the stairwell. He sorely wanted to know what would be said in that meeting, but there was no point in fretting over it. There was nothing he could do about Shironne’s situation, not for the next four months. He would just have to trust that she was safe in Tabita and Eli’s hands.

  And he had two days’ worth of work piled up on his desk. Mikael sighed and started down the stairwell toward the first floor, aware of the quarterguards’ eyes on him at all times.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  SHIRONNE SAT IN a tiny anteroom, one designed for listening to whatever happened in the receiving hall beyond its doors. Do all halls in the palace have an alcove to listen like this? She’d overheard most of what passed between her mother and Mikael, although at some point her mother had lowered her voice, leaving Shironne to guess.

  In the past month, she and her mother had discussed Mikael Lee many times. Her mother had asked the doctor, Deborah, to come out to the house on Antrija Street a few times to discuss him. She’d discussed him with those servants in the household who knew him. Her mother probably knew almost everything about Mikael Lee by this point. With good cause.

  Until a month ago, Shironne had rarely thought of marrying.

  Then she’d met Mikael. Now it seemed inevitable.

  That was the true reason behind placing her in the Lucas Family. They did want to keep her safe, but if that were the only reason, they could simply surround her with a wall of quarterguards in a borrowed bedroom in the king’s household within the palace.

  This was about her learning to live in a different world. A non-Larossan world.

  The three peoples of Larossa had shared this land for two centuries, and the Larossans and the Six Families went even further back than that. When the Larossans migrated onto their territory, the Families gave them seeds to plant. They helped them settle near their Fortresses. And the two groups had lived in relative peace . . . until the Anvarrid invaded. The Anvarrid and the Six Families had a treaty now that bound the Families to serve them first, making the Larossans an afterthought in their world, always separate.

  The Larossans and Families supposedly worshipped the same god, but Shironne knew from Mikael’s mind that the true god she’d been raised to revere was not the same as the Family’s Father Winter—and the Anvarrid hardly revered anything at all. And although the Larossans spoke Anvarrid now, they carried deeper blood ties to the Pedraisi on the far side of the eastern border.

  Most importantly, a Larossan woman had very few alternatives for her future, while an Anvarrid woman or a Family woman could work alongside their male counterparts without censure. They could do things with their lives.

  Her mother would have to learn to be Anvarrid now, as would Perrin and Melanna, but for Shironne, this was all about Mikael Lee, learning his world, his people and their customs. In the course of her previous interactions with Mikael, she’d been down inside the Fortress a couple of times and had even worn a brown uniform, but that wasn’t the same as being Family all day long. This was going to be a test by fire.

  She heard Dahar with his grumbling mind approach the door to the tiny room in which she waited. The sounds of moving fabric and metal rings on a metal bar were followed by the door opening—the door must be hidden behind a set of draperies. “Shironne,” he said, “will you come join us?”

  She had walked into this spot with her mother’s help, so it was surely just a matter of retracing those steps. Forcing down her trepidation about being in an unfamiliar place, Shironne rose, brushed gloved hands down her new trousers to straighten them, and walked out of the tiny room into a larger hall. Incense burned somewhere in the room, faint brushes of the oily smoke touching her cheeks—sandalwood, like the perfume her mother wore. A fire on the far side of the room crackled slightly, smelling of old oak. Shironne came a few steps into the room and stopped when her feet touched a rug. No, she hadn’t come this way before. She tried to get a sense of where the furnishings were but failed. She drew in a shaking breath.

  “If you go straight ahead, there’s a chaise for you to sit on,” her mother’s voice came softly. “Its back is to you, so you’ll feel that at waist height.”

  Pressing her lips together, Shironne walked straight forward across the rug and located the chaise. Her gloved fingers caught the slickness of leather, and she sensed her mother’s approval. She carefully walked around the chaise and sat. The tiny anteroom she’d been in had smelled stale, but in this room the scent of old incense permeated the fabrics and the rugs, the draperies and upholstery. If she took off her gloves, she would probably feel smoke trapped in the fibers like ghostly memories.

  “Is Eli out there?” Dahar asked of someone.

  One of the ever-present quarterguards. Shironne often didn’t sense them until someone addressed them directly. Their ability to keep their emotions hidden frequently surprised her. That was the most important thing for the Lucas Family—to keep their emotions calm—and they were clearly well practiced.

  “Yes, sir,” a woman responded.

  “Then fetch him in.”

  A door opened, telling Shironne where the room’s entryway was, so she shifted on the leather seat to face it. She had no idea how her brown uniform looked, but her mother would have warned her if she wasn’t presentable.

  The trousers and vest and jacket were plain brown, without any ornament—a strange thing. She’d grown up with elaborately embroidered clothes and bright colors. These trousers also fit far more closely than those she’d worn under her petticoats, binding and cutting if she sat the wrong way.

  It h
ad been one thing to wear these clothes for a single day last month. It had been temporary. Now she would have to wear them all the time, and the drawbacks were becoming more evident.

  When she’d met Eli that day, she’d done no more than exchange names. Shironne knew from her past encounters—by her sister Perrin’s reactions to the young man at that time—that he was handsome. That told her very little about his character. But he was Mikael’s student, and as such, she knew about him. Mikael liked him and thought him very self-assured for his age, perhaps even to the point of arrogance.

  The person with Eli was much harder to read. Like the quarterguards, the newcomer faded into the background, her emotional responses far quieter than the room’s three other occupants. Mikael had seen this girl in the hallway—Tabita, her name was—and knew her from . . .

  Shironne swallowed. She wasn’t supposed to know that. She wasn’t supposed to steal from his mind.

  But it’s so easy now.

  She sniffed and shook her head to clear that thought away. She clutched at the crystal in her pocket, the focus her mother had taught her to concentrate on when she became perturbed. As she understood the rules, she was allowed to have it with her as long as it wasn’t visible. She wasn’t even certain she needed it any longer. Instead of drawing the physical stone out of her pocket, she set her mind to recalling the straight lines and angular planes of it, creating an imaginary crystal to calm herself.

  “Shironne,” Dahar’s voice came, interrupting her thoughts, “I’d like you to meet Eli and Tabita of the sixteens. They’re going to be your yeargroup leaders for the next few months.”

  Shironne rose and bowed in what she hoped was the correct direction. “I am honored . . .” she began, only to grasp by virtue of Eli’s flaring skepticism that she’d made the wrong greeting.

  “It’s good to meet you,” she tried instead, a Family greeting stolen from Mikael’s memories. She could just feel Tabita’s interest now, a keen tumble of observation and evaluation held close inside her own thoughts.