“Uh-huh,” Gerond agreed, nodding so hard Talia thought his head was going to come off. “Just lately. She’s swapped me chores a couple times so she had the hour free—an’ she hates floorwashing! Somethin’ wrong?”

“No, I’ve just been having trouble finding her today,” Talia replied, taking care to seem nonchalant.

But she was unnerved. These two were Elspeth’s closest friends among her year-mates, and they only confirmed what Talia had begun to fear. There were gaps of an hour or so in Elspeth’s day during which she was vanishing, and no one seemed to have any idea of where she was.

It was time she checked her other sources—the Palace servants.

Talia perched herself on a settle, next to the cold fireplace in the Servant’s Hall. She had come to her friends—for many of the servants were her friends, and had been since she was a student—rather than raise anyone’s attention by having them come to her. Seated about her were a half-dozen servitors she had found to be the most observant and most trustworthy. Two of them, a chambermaid called Elise and a groom named Ralf, had pinpointed the guilty parties when a group of the “Blues” (or unaffiliated students) had tried to murder her as a student by attacking her and throwing her into the ice-covered river. Elise had seen several of Talia’s attackers coming in mucky, and thought it more than odd; Ralf had spotted the entire group hanging about the stable earlier. Both had reported their observations to Elcarth when word spread of the attempt on Talia’s life.

“All right,” Talia began, “I have a problem. Elspeth is going off somewhere about midafternoon every day, and I can’t find out where or why. I was hoping one of you would know.”

From the looks exchanged within the group, she knew she’d found her answer.

“She‘s—this goes no farther, young Talia—” this from Jan, one of the oldest there. He was a gardener, and to him, she would always be “young” Talia. Talia nodded and he continued. “She’s hangin’ about with young m’lord Joserlin Corby’s crew. Them as is no better’n rowdies.”

“Rowdies!” Elise snorted. “If ‘tweren’t for their highborn da’s, they’d been sent home long ago for the way they paw over every girl they can catch unawares.” “Girl” here meant “female servant”; if Elise had intended to say that the young men had been mishandling other females, she’d have said “m’ladies.” Not that this difference was very comforting; it meant that they were only confining unwanted attentions to the women who dared not protest overmuch.

“It’s said,” added another chambermaid, “that at home they gets t’ more’n pawings.”

“Such as?” Talia replied. “You know I won’t take it elsewhere.”