It was not that she didn’t enjoy Kordas’s company. Quite the contrary, she enjoyed it just a little too much. But his generous gift had come perilously close to causing her to crack the mask she always wore around him and her sister.

Every gift he had ever given her was generous, as far as that went. Take this suite, just as a for-instance. Granted, there was no shortage of room in this manor; in fact, she doubted that it was more than half occupied. But still, even by those standards, this was extraordinary.

The first room alone was the size of the suite she’d had as a child. This was the “public” room, the one where she would have brought guests, if she ever had guests. She could have hosted twenty people here with no crowding. It had a fine fireplace, comfortable padded furnishings upholstered in a dark brown leather, and walls lined with bookshelves. There were two windows with cushioned window-seats, and sheepskins scattered over the polished wooden floor. The next rooms were her bedroom, a closet so big her clothing barely took up a quarter of it, a bathing room, and a shielded magic room she never used at all because she wasn’t a mage. Everything matched: gleaming dark wood and shining dark leather, exactly the way she liked it. The bed was big enough for four, and had mage-lights in little cages mounted on the headboard, which had a little bookcase built into it.

Delia didn’t know the story of how Duke Valdemar—Kordas’s great-grandfather—had gotten a mage-built manor as a “gift” from the Emperor, but she knew why it had happened. It was all part of how the Emperor kept control over his nobles. You couldn’t safely refuse his offer to have his mages construct such a place for you, after all. But everything about the enormous piles they would make for you was calculated. It would be the height of luxury, setting you apart from your people immediately. Especially in a relatively poor Duchy like this one. It would also be utterly indefensible, which tended to discourage thoughts of rebellion. And, of course, since the layouts were exactly alike, you could not boast of having a better manor than someone else. The Emperor’s gifts always had many sticky threads attached.

Instead of seeking her bed, she stripped off her cape and draped it over a drying stand, and went to the window. Pressing her hand against the glass to check the temperature outside, she judged that it probably wasn’t going to snow, but it wasn’t going to be warm until whatever had caused the weather fluctuations passed them by. There was always war at the borders of the Empire, but this was the first time to her knowledge that what went on out at the frontier was actually affecting the Empire itself.