She couldn’t account for the way that the Princess Anna had taken to her. She had only met her twice. This was the second time. The first when the Empress Maria – doubtless to see this northern curiosity for herself – had summoned Lilla to her chambers. Lilla had passed a pleasant, if stilted, hour in their company, answering questions about her homeland and her journey and the customs of her people. She was happy enough to satisfy their interest and found herself curious in turn about what life was like for them, to live entombed in all this gilded splendour.

Princess Anna was a vivacious little creature, her attractiveness now in its full bloom with her sixteenth year, but Lilla fancied it would not endure. Her hair was dark like her mother’s, and her eyes still bright with innocence, but she had something of her father’s plainness about her too, her shoulders a little too broad, her legs a fraction too short. In short, she was still a girl. And her girlishness only made Lilla feel the guiltier for the secret she had to keep from her. Not that she would have acted any differently: Erlan was too important to her. Anyway, Anna would soon have to learn the ways of the world, as all women must. Or at least learn the ways of men. With a husband like Arbasdos, the lessons would not be long in coming.

The Empress Maria, on the other hand, was reserved and very proper in her speech and manner. A thin woman – once surely a great beauty – although she was hardly old even now. But she was one of those women whose beauty dried out of them a little more as each year passed like a tender piece of fruit, stretching her skin into a fine, fragile veil over her bones and what flesh she still carried. Maria did not speak unless each word had first been carefully considered. Perhaps she didn’t want to be thought a fool. But holding so obdurately to this line, there was something almost comic about the interplay between mother and daughter, since Princess Anna had no time for ceremony at all and frequently upset Maria’s carefully curated veneer. Poor girl, she had been born into the wrong life, Lilla reflected, since every day, from dawn to dusk, her existence at court was an endless succession of formalities.