Rule

Book 3: The Unraveled Kingdom

by Rowenna Miller

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy

Synopsis

In the epic conclusion to the Unraveled Kingdom trilogy, a magical seamstress joins forces with her revolutionary leader brother in a deadly bid to change history. The civil war that charm caster Sophie and the crown prince, Theodor, have tried so desperately to avert has come to Galitha. While Theodor joins Sophie's brother and his Reformist comrades in battle hoping to turn the tide against the Royalist army, Sophie leverages the only weapon she has: charm and curse casting. Weaving her magic into uniforms and supplies, she soon discovers that the challenges of a full-scale war are far greater than she could have imagined. The fractured leadership of the Reformist army must coalesce and the people of Galitha need to unite against enormous odds -- all while Sophie creates more than a little magical luck in order to have a chance of victory. Rowenna Miller's enchanting fantasy series, the Unraveled Kingdom, is perfect for fans of The Queen of the Tearling and Red Queen. The Unraveled Kingdom Torn Fray Rule

Release date: May 19, 2020

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 432

Sample

THE SUMMER SUN HAD RIPENED THE BERRIES IN THE HEDGEROWS of the Order of the Golden Sphere, dyeing them a rich ruddy purple. The juices, a red more brilliant than even the best scarlet silk, stained my fingers as I plucked them from the deep brambles. Within several yards in any direction, novices of the order filled baskets of their own. A wheat-haired girl with pale honey eyes had a smear of berry-red across the front of her pale gray gown. She sighed and adjusted her starched white veil, leaving another red streak.

I stifled a laugh, then sobered. A war waged some hundreds of miles south of us, the sisters of the Golden Sphere were deep in study at the art of casting charms under my tutelage, Sastra-set Alba was making final arrangements for an alliance-cementing voyage to Fen.

And I was picking berries.

I snagged my thumb on a large, curved thorn; nature made needles as effective as any I had used in my atelier, and the point produced a bead of blood almost instantly. I drew my hand carefully away and wrapped the tiny wound in my apron, letting the red stain sink into the linen.

Picking berries. As though that were an acceptable way to spend my afternoon, now of all times. I flicked the corner of the apron away with a frustrated sigh. My basket was already nearly full, but the bushes were still thick with purple. I knew what Alba would say—winter cared little for our war, and all the members of the community fortified the larder against that enemy. I wanted to rebel against that pragmatic logic. The ordered calm of the convent mocked me, the pristine birchwood and the gardens all carrying on an unconcerned life and inviting me to join in.

It infuriated me. Probably, I acknowledged as I resumed plucking fruit for the basket, because the pacific quiet was so inviting. Here I could almost forget—had forgotten, in horrifying, brief instants—that my country was at war. That my friends in the city could be killed under bombardment, that Theodor and my brother in the south could be overrun on the battlefield.

Letters were painfully delayed, coming weeks after they were sent, if at all, as the Royalist navy poached ships off the coast and the overland routes remained treacherous. I had learned to cope by pretending that nothing happened between receipt of one letter and the next, that the events Theodor and Kristos described unfolded in the instant I read them. The possibilities that a single day could bring—a crushing defeat, mass desertion, my brother captured, Theodor killed—overwhelmed me if I allowed myself to think about them.

Which was especially difficult when the last letter had come weeks ago, sent weeks before that. Kristos wrote to both Alba and me, carefully penning his letter to avoid betraying any vital specifics should it come into the wrong hands. Still, the message was clear. Volunteers—mostly untrained agrarian workers and fishermen—gathered in Hazelwhite, and Sianh had to prepare them for future large-scale battles while engaging in skirmishes with the Royalists still holding territory in the south. The ragtag army made up of both radical Red Caps and moderate Reformists had coalesced effectively enough to take several small fortifications, but I sensed from the letter that these were positions the Royalists were willing to give up.

The real battles remained at a hazy distance in the future, just soon enough that the thought of them left a swirl of nausea in my stomach and a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted, desperately, to do something, but teaching the “light-touched” sisters of the convent how to manipulate charm magic was plodding, redundant work, removed from the immediacy of the war for Galitha.

The novice with the berry-stained veil motioned me over. Many of the novices took temporary vows of silence, and though it was not required, there were some sisters who maintained the vow for life, on the premise that silence made communion with the Creator’s ever-present spirit easier. Despite long hours of silence, on account of having no one to speak with here, I was no closer to any such communion.

I dropped the last few berries from the hedge into my basket and joined her. I raised an eyebrow and pointed to her veil; she flushed pink as she noticed the stain, and pointed toward the narrow road that carved a furrow through the forest.

Still too far away to see through the trees, travelers announced themselves with the rattle of wheels. She looked to me with baleful curiosity, as though I might know anything. As though I might be able to tell her in the stilted, limited Kvys I had picked up in the past weeks if I did. The other sisters along the hedgerow noted the sound and gave it little heed, turning back to their berries as though the outside world didn’t exist.

To them, perhaps, it didn’t.

Alba crested the little rise behind the convent and strode toward me. Her pale linen gown, a more traditional Kvys design than she had worn in West Serafe, more traditional even than most of the sisters, floated behind her on a light breeze. The yoke was decorated with symbols of the Order of the Golden Sphere embroidered in blackwork, circles and crosshatches and thin dotted lines I now understood to be references to charm magic.

The berry-stained novice bowed her head, as did the other sisters, to a Sastra-set, but Alba wasn’t looking for them. “The hyvtha is gathering,” she said, using the Kvys word that usually referred to a band of threshers at harvest or a troupe of musicians. “Let’s see if anyone has made any progress since yesterday, shall we?”

“Don’t tell me we’re disappointing you,” I said, deadpan. Trying to teach adults who had been suppressing any inclination toward casting since they were children was nearly impossible. Of our hyvtha of eighteen women and two men from the order’s brother monastery, only ten reliably saw the light, three could maintain enough focus to hold on to it, and one had managed a shaky, crude clay tablet. Tantia was proud of her accomplishment but had yet to repeat it.

Alba expected a battalion of casters capable of the exquisitely fine work in the order’s basilica, and I had one caster who struggled with work a trained Pellian girl could churn out at eight.

The travelers appeared on the road, a comfortable carriage drawn by a pair of gray Kvys draft horses. “And those are the Fenians.”

“Which Fenians?” I asked, craning my neck as though I could see past the lead glass windows in the carriage.

“The foundry owner. Well, his son who handles his negotiations, at any rate.” Her smile sparkled. “Your cannons are forthcoming.”

“So we’ll go to Fen—when?”

“I’m still working on the shipyard, and I’ve two mill owners on the string, each trying to underbid the other for the fabric.” She grinned—she enjoyed this game of gold and ink. It made me feel ill, betting with money that wasn’t mine. My business had been built carefully, brick by precisely planned brick, and these negotiations with Fen felt like a house of cards, ready to topple under the breath of a single wrong word.

More, anxiety gnawed at the periphery of everything I thought, said, or did, fueled by the persistent fear that the war might be lost before I could even properly contribute. That I could lose everything, including everyone I loved, for want of quick, decisive action. Alba didn’t seem motivated to act quickly as I did, and there was nothing I could do to prod her from her insistence on the time-consuming propriety of negotiations.

I bit back the argument I’d made many times, haste before all else, as she continued. “Given the meeting with the Fenians, then, I will not be joining the hyvtha this afternoon. See if Tantia can explain her methods to the others.”

“I don’t think the problem is my Kvys,” I protested.

Alba ignored my suggestion—that her plan for a small regiment of charm-casting sisters and brothers of the order was next to impossible—and strode toward the gates to greet our Fenian guests. I rinsed the berry juice from my hands at the pump in the courtyard of the convent. Stains remained on my fingertips and palms.

“PRA-SET,” I SAID IN POOR KVYS, THE WORDS STICKING TO THE roof of my mouth like taffy, hoping that my meaning, very good, was clear to the struggling initiate. Immell’s hand shook as she drew her stylus across a damp clay tablet, dragging ragged charm magic into the inscription.

Tantia, who had managed to craft another charmed tablet, laid her hand on Immell’s arm, reassuring her in a stream of quiet, almost poetic Kvys. I couldn’t follow more than a few words, so I nodded dumbly, what I hoped was a comforting smile plastered on my face. Immell’s hand steadied, and the pale glow around her stylus grew stronger, brighter. “Pra-set!” I repeated.

Immell finished the inscription, a word in Kvys whose meaning, Creator’s mercy, stood in for luck. The charm magic receded from her hand as she lifted her stylus from the clay, but the charm remained embedded in the tablet. “Pra-set,” I said again, examining her work. It was uneven and one letter was barely legible even to my unschooled eye, but it was done.

We were still a long way from what Alba hoped for, a phalanx of charm casters who had mastered what I could do. A complement to the Galatine army, she suggested. A safeguard for her house’s authority, I read between the lines. And a challenge to the laws prohibiting magic in Kvyset.

A few simple actions, a few stones tossed into a pond infinitely larger than myself, and the ripples were still reaching outward, trembling and new, but intent on fomenting change wherever they went.

Tantia and Immell were speaking in rapid Kvys, gesturing at the tablet. Another novice, Adola, joined them, and the three linked hands. “Da nin?” I wondered aloud. What now?

Tantia slapped some fresh clay from the bowl on the table, forming a sloppy disk with her free hand. I was about to chide her—orderliness was supposed to cultivate the mind for casting, especially in new learners—but she picked up her stylus and pressed her lips together, squinting into the blank space in front of her.

Light blazed around the stylus and all but drove itself into the clay, sparkling clean and pure in the gray slab. “Da bravdin-set! Pra bravdin olosc-ni varsi!” she exclaimed.

“How did you make such a strong charm?” I asked, correcting myself swiftly to Kvys. “Da olosc bravdin-set?”

“Is hands holding,” Tantia replied, bypassing attempting to explain to me in Kvys. “Hands. I put hand on Immell, she cast.”

“And the three of you—you joined hands and your charm was much stronger.”

She nodded, smiling. “Easy cast, too. Than before.” She thought a moment, then added, “Easy than alone.”

“How have I never come across this before.” I sighed through my nose. Pellian charm casters worked by themselves, except when an older woman was teaching a novice. “You would think,” I began, but stopped myself. My time in the Galatine and Serafan archives had taught me that precious little had been recorded on the subject of casting at all. One would think something important had been written down, but that didn’t mean it had.

The other sisters and the one brother who had joined us drew closer and Tantia explained what had happened. “We practice,” she announced.

I nodded, overwhelmed by their near-accidental discovery. Surely a mother held her daughter’s hand while teaching her to cast. But perhaps the process of learning was so different in adults that we noticed the effects more, realized that they were amplifying and not only teaching or steadying one another. More research. In the convent archives. In Kvys. I sighed.

I fled to my room, the only place I was ever alone in the compound. It was clean and bright and spare, with pale wood furniture carved in woodland animals and starbursts on the posts and rails. White linen and cherry-red wool covered the bed. A Kvys prayer book and hymnal lay on a shelf over the window. I couldn’t read any of it.

A light scratch on the door, and a dark gray paw shot under the slim crack. Its black claws searched for purchase.

“Kyshi.” I laughed and opened the door. The dark gray squirrel scurried into the room. A thin circlet of hammered brass around his neck glinted as he clambered up my bedspread and began to nose around my pillow as though I might have hidden a trove of nuts under the coverlet.

I opened my trunk and produced my secret larder—a handful of cracked chestnuts. “These are mine, little thief,” I chided him. He burrowed under my hand and swiped a nut. “Don’t take all my good chestnuts. They’re almost fresh.”

His sharp teeth made quick work of what was left of the shell, his nimble paws turning the nut over and around as he chewed. He had been abandoned in his drey and hand raised by Sastra Dyrka, who worked in the kitchens, where he had developed an astute palate for nuts of all kinds, as well as pastries, sugared fruits, and ham. Now he was a communal pet and quite nearly a mascot for the order.

He settled onto my lap after his snack. I stroked his fur, rich and warm as the finest wool. I wanted to bury my fingers in his thick tail, but he chattered disapprovingly every time I tried.

I felt useless. I thought of a time that felt longer ago than a single year, when my brother was staying out late in the taverns and drumming up support for change, before Pyord solidified their plans with money and centralized violence. Before I had realized I couldn’t escape the questions that nagged my brother, before I understood that, for all I had built with long hours and tiring work, it was on a cracked and crumbling foundation. I had resisted participating then, had rebuked my brother for even asking. Now I craved action. Picking berries, petting the squirrel, teaching novice charm casters—it all felt unimportant, artificial, and distant.

My place was with Galitha. My place was fighting for a better country, a better world for my neighbors and my friends and thousands of people I didn’t know.

Kyshi started as the door opened, darted up my shoulder, and settled against my neck. “Alba.” I acknowledged her as she entered.

“The Fenians are quite amenable to our terms,” she said. “Ah, I do like having a freshly inked contract in hand.”

“It’s done!” I sat upright, dislodging Kyshi, who protested with a profane squirrel screech and his claws in my hair.

“Cannon barrels. Three-, six-, and twelve-pound guns. In the proportions Sianh recommended.” Alba smiled. “And of course we will oversee the process for at least a portion of the run on-site at the Fenian foundry.”

“Of course,” I said. I chewed my lip.

“We’ll finish talks with the mill owners and the ship builders and then—Fen!” She grinned. “You look less than pleased.”

“I’m just tired,” I lied. “And I admit, I’m a bit nervous about Fen.” That, at least, was the truth.

“Fen is dull and they’ll ignore you like they ignore anyone who isn’t in the process of paying them or bilking them.” She shrugged. “Fenians.”

“But the law.”

“‘But the law!’” Alba mimicked my hesitation with a good-natured laugh. “What, you’re going to hang out a shingle, ‘Charms Cast for Cheap’?” Kyshi trailed down my arm and settled in my lap again, serving Alba a stern look for the volume of her voice.

“No. I wasn’t. But if anyone found out…” I let my fingers tremble on Kyshi’s soft coat. The Fenian penalties for even illusions, simple trickster’s street magic, included transportation to their cliff colonies, desolate places scoured half-dead by the northern winds. And actual crimes of attempted magical practices—execution, all of them. Galatine gossip pages sometimes carried stories of Fenian women—always women—tried for buying or selling clay tablets, sentenced to drowning in the deep blue waters off Fen’s rocky shores.

“No one will find out. Remember, they don’t have any idea you can even cast a charm without your needle and thread. And we’ll keep it that way. You’re quite confident in your methods once we reach Fen, correct? The looms will be set up for our orders and running swift as a sleigh on new snow, just as soon as money has been exchanged.”

“Yes,” I said. It had taken little practice to embed the charm in lengths of cloth.

“And you can be… subtle?”

“Of course I can.” To prove my point, I pulled a stream of light from the ether and sent it into the blanket, spreading it thin and sinking it into the fibers, all without more than a twitch of my fingers. “See?”

“Yes,” Alba said with a slowly growing smile, “I do. And you believe that doing so while the looms are running—”

“It will be fully integrated into the cloth. Woven into warp and weft, not just burrowed into it like a stain.”

“Good, good. And the cannons—”

“I don’t know what to do with the cannons.” I shook my head. There was no way to predict what charmed or cursed iron guns would do. “I think it’s best if we do nothing. If I charm them, they might protect our men but also fire ineffectually on the enemy. If I curse them, they might blow up and kill our own crews.”

“It seems such a waste.” Alba sighed. “Are you quite sure that even the shot couldn’t be cursed?”

“It might foul the whole gun,” I said.

“Too bad. But you see, there’s nothing to worry over. You’ve everything quite well in hand.”

“It’s only… I didn’t expect to be threatened in Isildi, either.”

Alba laughed. “I assure you that the Fenians are not the Serafans. They aren’t hiding anything, and you’re bringing them significant investments. And in Fen, nothing speaks louder than gold.” She caught my free hand in hers. “Trust me. The Fenians are a strange people, to be sure, but not indecipherable.”

THE LONG DINING HALL OF THE HOUSE OF THE GOLDEN SPHERE was always cramped at the dinner hour, the simple tables and benches lined with novices and initiates and full-fledged sisters. I had expected the house of a religious order, and a Kvys one at that, to be a quiet place, but aside from morning and evening prayers and daily services in the basilica there was nearly always laughter and chatter echoing through the halls and gardens. It served to remind me, constantly, that I was an outsider here, speaking too little Kvys to converse easily.

I took my trencher of bean soup and a wedge of bread, flecked at the top with yellow cheese. The sisters may have taken an oath of simplicity, but that couldn’t be confused with poverty here. Small indulgences like good cheese, wine, and rich desserts weren’t uncommon. The sisters were expected to work for their keep, however, all contributing to the gardening that filled the larders and the cleaning that kept the pale, spare buildings shining.

Tonight Tantia doled out baked apples stuffed with spiced nuts; it was her turn in the kitchen, and even hours of study with me didn’t excuse her from that duty. She smiled and gave me an extra-large apple. It smelled like the roasted chestnuts laden with mace and clove that street vendors hawked in the fall and winter in Galitha City.

I sighed, my appetite not matching the size of my dessert. Did Theodor have enough to eat, or had the Royalist navy blockaded the southern ports and cut off supplies? Was Kristos safe, or had he been injured or captured in a skirmish? I stared at the caramelized juices pooling around my apple, an ache no food could fill spreading in my stomach.

“Tantia likes you better than me,” Alba complained, sitting next to me. Her apple was half the size of mine.

“You can have mine,” I offered, and Alba swapped our fruits. “Shouldn’t you be entertaining Fenians?”

“They left already—you didn’t see them leave? No, that’s right, you were cleaning the library.”

“It hardly needs it, barely a speck of dust in all those shelves.”

“Books are treasures, we take good care of ours.” Alba savored a spoonful of the soup, and I wordlessly ate some of mine. The broth was rich with smoked ham hocks. “Of course I had hoped that you would spend some more time there with Altasvet to dig into the old volumes of the order’s history. There might be something there that—”

“There isn’t,” I replied, short. We’d been over this. The logbooks, the diaries, the transcribed prayers—none of it included pragmatic applications for Kvys casting. The construction of the basilica, which was imbued with layers of charm magic, had not even been described beyond a few notes on the timing and the costs of materials.

Alba sighed. “We must use our time here wisely,” she said tersely.

“I am.” I stared at the shreds of smoked pork on my spoon and forced a few more bites. I couldn’t make myself sick worrying. The war in Galitha felt so far away, but it needed me. “The best use of our time,” I added, “is elsewhere.”

“In good time,” Alba said. “The Fenian contracts are complete, and soon—”

“Soon!” I nearly shouted, drawing eyes from nearby nuns. I swallowed hard and shoved my trencher away. “They need us,” I whispered. “They could be dying. Waiting. It’s been weeks. Months, now, since we left West Serafe.”

“I understand that this is difficult,” Alba said. “But the business of negotiation is delicate. I can’t simply barge into a Fenian factory and make demands.”

“I can’t just sit here any longer!”

“You can,” Alba said evenly, “and unless you’d like to set off by yourself, you will.” Perhaps she expected more argument, but I stood and left. I walked toward the basilica, candles already winking through the windows as the sisters set up the space for evening prayer service. Alba didn’t understand. She couldn’t. This was a gamble for her, too, of course, but no one she loved was waging war hundreds of miles away. Her betrothed wasn’t risking death. Alba had her order, her sister nuns, but she was not, from what I could tell, bound in the kind of close kinships I had. If she loved, it was silently and secretly.

But she strategized and planned for the advancement of the Golden Sphere and, I allowed, protected her order. To the extent that I served that goal, she protected me, too.

I entered the basilica by the main door. The long aisle opened in front of me, benches of pale wood almost shimmering under candlelight. I didn’t have to attend all of the services here the way the sisters did; novices were only required to attend morning prayers and the weekly services, as well as the long services on Glorious Holy Days, which peppered the Kvys calendar heavily. Still, I liked the quiet here, and I liked the order of the service, the way it moved in such a carefully orchestrated rhythm that it appeared organic, the way it repeated and circled. It reminded me in some ways of my sewing, of the peace that can come from familiarity and repetition.

There was far less ornamentation here than in the Galatine cathedral in Fountain Square. Instead, the beauty was in the purity of the arches, the gentle curve of the beams, the orderly, symmetrical windows. It was perfect with the same pale tranquility as fresh-fallen snow. I felt that I might mar it, somehow, as I found an empty bench in the back. All was still and silent.

Until the sisters began to sing.

In the music archive of the great West Serafan university, Corvin had told me about the choral music of the Kvys orders. Even so, the intricate, haunting beauty of the harmonies had stolen my breath the first time I came to evening services. I was in awe of the precision of the voices, strands of sound like thread weaving over and under one another. If I closed my eyes, I could lose myself as the music filled the basilica. I had no idea what the words meant, but it didn’t matter, because I could feel the depth of the meaning.

If the Order of the Golden Sphere had ever cast using music, they had not retained any of that practice, even by accident. The magic of the choir was something else entirely, the magic I had experienced when Marguerite played her harp in Viola’s salon. Even if war tore my country apart, beauty still existed. It always had. I clung to the belief that it always would.

The choir finished their piece with a resonant chord. Sastra Altasvet sat beside me as the cantor, a reedy sister with wiry red hair sneaking out from under her veil, began to lead the prayers.

“You look for answers in many places, eh, Sastra-kint?” Altasvet was the primary caretaker of the library. Her Galatine grammar was nearly perfect, but her pronunciation was difficult to understand; she had spent far more time with Galatine books than Galatine people. It was probably fair to guess that she had spent more time with books than with people of any sort.

“I do, Sastra,” I answered honestly.

“There are most probably better answers here than in any library,” she said. “Our books, even our best books, are imperfect reflections of the Creator.”

I smiled politely. I quickly found myself in over my head in theological conversations with the sisters, our language barriers aside. Galatine worship focused on the Sacred Natures, Pellians on their ancestors, and I had not been a strict adherent of either faith. The concept of a vague and distant Creator was strange to me.

“There are very few places we have not looked in the library,” she said quietly. “I am afraid any hint of magic may have been removed years—centuries—ago.”

“It is not the sort of thing your leaders wish to hold on to,” I acknowledged.

“No, nor many of our people. It is a dangerous business, Sastra-kint.” She sighed.

“Indeed it is.” Alba stood behind us. I started, but she maintained an expression like ironed linen. “I do not like to interrupt your meditation on the Divine Creator, Sastra-kint Sophie, but I must ask that you come with me. A carriage has arrived with visitors.”

“WE WERE NOT ANTICIPATING GUESTS TODAY,” ALBA SAID AS WE left the basilica and skirted the courtyard of the convent. She didn’t intend it, but a faint tremor of fear slipped into her voice. We had plenty to hide. “That’s the device of Nater-set Kierk painted on the carriage door. Of the Order of the Lead Scale—humorless fellows, all of them. Tashdi,” she cursed. Nearby, a novice’s eyes widened. “Get some berries from the larder,” she instructed her in Kvys. “Tell Sastra Dyrka to make a berry pudding, it’s Nater-set Kierk’s favorite.”

The novice meekly scurried off, no doubt effectively led to believe that any concern was over the reception of the high brother, given Alba’s focus on the pudding.

“Berry pudding?” I said with half a smile.

“It’s one of Dyrka’s specialties—ah, and you learned the word for pudding. Very good,” Alba teased. Then she straightened and sighed, smoothing the precise box pleats of her pale linen overdress. “Kierk is a pompous ass, and most of the order doesn’t think much of him, but he is on the Church Assembly Council for Spiritual Discipline.” Her mouth puckered as though she’d bitten down on an unripe berry. “That’s code for investigations of blasphemy. Blasphemy of the theological, the liturgical, and the practical, of which casting is of course included.”

“You said yourself that it would be impossible to keep my presence here a secret.”

“Yes, but your presence here is not against any rule. Any person can seek sanctuary in our order, and that is protected under Kvys law. Just as any person can seek medical intervention with the Order of the Holy Well or orphans are always welcomed at the Order of the Blessed Dove.”

“So he’s checking in on me,” I surmised.

“Possible. Possible he’s just making his rounds. Or possible he’s somehow found out that I’ve made contacts in Fen and wants to inquire more.” She shrugged. “Or he knows it’s berry season and remembers Dyrka’s pudding. He’s got a sweet tooth like a deprived child.”

Alba insisted I accompany her to greet Nater-set Kierk. There was, we both agreed, no purpose in trying to evade him if he was indeed here to investigate my presence. The less we behaved as though we had something to hide, the less he might assume that we did.

Kierk already waited beside his heavy coach, his dark robes of fine gray wool picking up stray leaves from the cobblestones.

“Sastra-set Alba.” The tall Kvys bowed slightly, from the waist, though he did not take his eyes off Alba. She did not bow; as high sister in her own house, she didn’t have to. And she chose not to, not for the high brother of the Order of the Lead Scale, elevated by the priesthood’s assembly far beyond merely managing a house of his order.

“Nater-set Kierk.” She greeted him with open, outstretched palms, which she swiftly folded together lest he actually decide to embrace her. I made myself small against the shadows of the courtyard arbor. She continued in Kvys, and I made out inside and refreshments and pudding.

He shook his head with grave authority and a torrent of Kvys. Alba raised her eyebrows slightly, in controlled surprise, but didn’t give anything else away. My palms, meanwhile, grew damp as I clutched my simple gray wool skirt, and my heart echoed hollow in my chest. What could he want? Was he, even now, scanning for my face among the Kvys sisters? I couldn’t hide here; my sun-touched skin and dark hair stood out among these women with complexions of moonlight and birchwood and flax.

Alba beckoned him inside, leaving me in the courtyard with the rest of the o