Just before lunch, as I was leaving my own room in our smaller house, Raughd’s personal attendant walked into the middle of the main kitchen and stood, silent and trembling, her gaze fixed, off somewhere distant and overhead. Eight was there seeing after something for Sirix. At first no one noticed the attendant, everyone was working busily on getting the last of the food prepared, but after a few moments one of the assistant cooks looked up, saw the attendant standing there shaking, and gave a loud gasp. “The honey!” the assistant cook cried. “Where’s the honey?”

Everyone looked up. Saw the attendant, whose trembling only increased, who began, now, to open her mouth as though she was about to speak, or possibly vomit, and then closed it again, over and over. “It’s too late!” someone else said, and the second assistant cook said, panic in her voice, “I used all the honey in the cakes for this afternoon!”

“Oh, shit!” said a servant who had just come into the kitchen with dirty teabowls, and I knew from the way no one turned to admonish her that whatever this was, it was serious business.

Someone dragged in a chair, and three servants took hold of Raughd’s attendant and lowered her into it, still shaking, still opening and closing her mouth. The first assistant cook came running with a honey-soaked cake and broke a piece off, put it into the attendant’s gaping mouth. It tumbled out onto the floor, to cries of dismay. The attendant looked more and more as though she were going to throw up, but instead she made a long, low moan.

“Oh, do something! Do something!” begged the servant with the dirty dishes. Lunch was entirely forgotten.

By this time I had begun to have some idea of what was happening. I had seen things something like this before, though not this particular reaction to it.

“Are you all right, Fleet Captain?” Sirix, in the other building, in the hallway outside both our rooms. She must have come out while I was absorbed by the goings-on in the main building’s kitchen.

I blinked the vision away, so that I could see Sirix and answer. “I didn’t realize the Samirend practiced spirit possession.”

Sirix did not attempt to hide her expression of distaste at my words. But then she turned her face away, as though she was ashamed to meet my gaze, and made a disgusted noise. “What must you think of us, Fleet Captain?”

Us. Of course. Sirix was Samirend.

“It’s the kind of thing someone does,” she continued, “when they’re feeling ignored or put out. Everyone rushes to give them sweets and say kind things to them.”