Meanwhile . . . all the time this is going on, I can put myself in charge of the gardens. I can be directing soldiers and the gardeners they pull from the city gardens what to do about the Palace garden. And I can be thinking about who to blame and what to say when someone checks on Valdemar.

I might even be able to slip away—no, I shouldn’t do that, not unless I can’t think of someone to blame. That should be my first priority. I should act as baffled as everyone else to discover that three quarters of the population and all the herds and supplies are gone.

The longer I can keep them from looking at Valdemar, the colder the trail will get.

I’ll do it. But I can’t tell Isla. And I can’t tell Star, either, because the Dolls will tell her. I can’t tell anyone.

Poor Beltran. He’s going to be stuck here, too.

He groaned. This place was as close to hell as anything on earth he had ever seen. And he was consigning himself to it.

Was this his just deserts for all the things in his life he had done wrong?

And if all my calculations are wrong, and they do decide I’m behind this . . .

Everything I’ve consigned myself to will seem like a pleasant garden stroll.

—

He had expected Star to squeeze him into some new, elaborate outfit for the “Blind Feast,” since it was supposed to be so important. But the Doll just brought him the newest and most immaculate of his outfits, kitted him out with everything, including the Spitter, and made sure there wasn’t a speck of dust on him. Then Star followed him down to the Dining Hall, where he found himself joining the tail of something he had never seen here before.

A line.

This, it seemed, was where he and everyone else were supposed to be kitted out with their “helmets.” When he got to the head of the line, the people before him were fitted with something that looked like a helmet with a blank visor; it was fitted to their head, and the visor pulled down. His mage-sight gave him a little flash of some unknown spell being invoked when the visor came down, then the person was led away carefully by a Doll.

No words were exchanged when it was his turn. Interestingly, the two people putting the helmet on him were human. Junior mages, perhaps? At any rate, the helmet was put on his head.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when it tightened down around his head and a bit of his face, as if to make certain he couldn’t remove it or shift it himself. It felt incredibly intrusive, and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.