As he and Hakkon had stood just off the Imperial Portal platform, staring at the dozens of people scrambling to and fro, none of whom were paying any attention to them, it became clear that no one in the entire Portal room was prepared to step up to find out who they were, much less help them.

Hakkon, however, was not prepared to take that sort of treatment. Not after a full day of transiting Portal to Portal, at none of which had anyone offered them so much as a drink of water.

Hakkon had marched out into the room, grabbed the first unburdened person in Imperial livery that he saw, and growled something at the man. Kordas had been too far away to hear what Hakkon said, but it, and Hakkon’s size, evidently made an impression on the servant. The man scuttled away with the speed of a terrified mouse, and by the time Hakkon had returned to Kordas’s side, another harried-looking servant in Imperial livery appeared in a doorway, looking for them.

That was the first time Hakkon had intervened for him, but it had by no means been the last.

They’d been led to a vast wing of mostly tiny rooms, about the size of monastic cells, actually smaller than the bedrooms supplied to the servants here at the manor. There had been just enough room for a wardrobe, a chest, and two narrow beds. Hakkon had left him alone to survey this grim prospect with dismay. And, truth to tell, he had been close to breaking down in tears. He hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. He’d been forced to leave all of his friends at the manor behind, and by that time, that had included Isla, who was his very best friend.

The overt reason for Isla coming to spend time at Valdemar had been to help his then-invalided mother run the manor. Now he knew (although he had not at the time) that their fathers had decided to introduce the two of them to see if they would suit. It had been a clever move; their birthdays were within two moons of each other, they were both highly intelligent, and they were both mages—though their fathers had made it very clear that they were never to reveal this outside the family. The Emperor prized mages, and would collect every one that he found into his service. And Isla had the added bonus of being a Mindspeaker.

I hate to think what would have happened to her if the Emperor had known about that. The best she could have expected would have been being mewed up with the rest of his mages. He’d seen where they lived, a vast edifice attached to the Imperial Palace; he’d also seen, rarely, some of the mages themselves. They never looked happy.