“Charmed, charmed,” Pierson replied absently. “Oh! Don’t you remember little Macalay? How he’d get up a full candlemark before anyone else and scuttle into the bathing chamber to do his business before anyone could get in there and see him naked?”

I remember him scuttling in there because in his first week he’d been held under the water in the tub and nearly drowned, Kordas thought, as he pretended to laugh.

“You shared bathing chambers?” Merrin gasped.

That only increased Pierson’s mirth.

Kordas traded “school memories” with Pierson until someone on Pierson’s other side got his attention, and involved him in a debate on some woman’s charms. Merrin still seemed to be in a state of shock, but shook himself out of it when Kordas finished his course of beefsteak and got his attention again.

“So, as I was saying, Merrin, so far, I have to say everything here at Court is a delight. These Dolls! What servants they make! Silent, and you know they aren’t going to gossip about you belowstairs. And my apartment—well, it’s a sharp step up from the manor at Valdemar, I can tell you that!” Now . . . let’s see what you make of that.

“Your manor—what do you mean?” Merrin asked, taken aback.

“Well, you know, it was built a long time ago, and a lot of it’s empty, so . . . well, over the decades things have—happened.” He shrugged.

“What kind of things?” Merrin asked.

He lowered his voice. “Well, between just the two of us . . . I think the mages that built it might have been, you know—” He mimed drinking. “I mean, we both know Valdemar is a backwater, and the Emperor isn’t exactly going to send his best. The gods know he’s got far more important things to do than mess about making sure this or that manor is up to snuff.” He took a long swig of wine. “I mean, according to my grandfather, we were completely honored and gobsmacked that he had thought to build us a manor at all!”

He ate a few more bites to prolong the tension.

“And?” prompted Merrin.

“Well . . . we don’t know how they got in, but a couple of the towers are full of bats. Full of them! They come out in clouds every night! And after a while, you just accept the smell of their abundant droppings. Not,” he added, “that I’m complaining, mind you, because they are brilliant at eating up the bugs.”

“Bugs?” Merrin asked, a little faintly.

He nodded. “The bugs came in with the pigeons that took over what we call the Rose Tower, because you can see the rose garden so well from there. Or you could, if you didn’t have to kick through pigeon shit a foot deep on the floor of the top story.”