The “Circle,” as they liked to be called, were six incredibly old mages who all lived in the same tower. They looked and acted today exactly the same as they had looked and acted when Kordas had first been old enough to notice them, and Hakkon had confirmed that they had looked and acted that way when he had first arrived. For all Kordas could tell, they’d been here since his grandfather’s day. When they were not asleep, they gathered in a comfortable room at the base of their tower, sitting on the floor on enormous cushions stuffed with buckwheat hulls or crushed nut shells that had molded over time to exactly fit the shapes of their skinny behinds and backs, positioned just out of slapping range of each other. Pages brought them their meals and wine. Mostly wine—although Kordas had done some discreet monitoring, and had discovered that they didn’t drink nearly as much as people assumed, or that they would like people to assume. They all went by single names—if they had last names, no one here at the manor still knew what they were. Ponu, Dole, Wis, Koto, Ceri, and Sai.

They never seemed to actually do anything. They certainly didn’t seem to use their magical workrooms in the tower. Mostly they sat in their circle and gossiped about—well, everything. As a child, Kordas had sometimes snuck into their room to listen quietly, and somehow they seemed to know literally everything that was going on, not only in the Duchy, not only in the neighboring holdings, but even in the Emperor’s own Court.

Most people dismissed them as senile and crazy. “Why do you keep them around, Father?” Kordas had once asked. Kordas’s father had actually gotten down to Kordas’s level so he could look his son straight in the eyes.

“First, they have nowhere else to go that is safe for them,” he’d said, carefully. “The Emperor would use up their last years in a heartbeat if he got hold of them. But second—just because you don’t see them working, doing magic like Jonaton and the others do, it doesn’t mean they are doing nothing. If you ask the right question, if they know something they think you need to know, or if there is danger to the Duchy and us, listen to them, and they’ll tell you things worth knowing. It’s when they stare directly at you and point fingers that you had better listen carefully. They’re each wise, but put together, they’re more wise than just six people.”

He hadn’t needed to consult them very often, but when he did . . . in between the insults and the in-jokes he didn’t understand, he discovered that his father had been right.

“By the way, how much do you know about Jonaton’s larcenous side?” he asked as they went down the stairs.