“I am indignant on your behalf. Of course he trusted you! You’re a trustworthy person! Yet he threw you off for what he took as a personal slight. Young men see everything reflected in their own honor.”

She chuckled. “Now you’re talking about Andevai.”

I smiled. “That’s better. I like to hear you laugh.”

Rory relaxed as Bee’s hand lost its death grip on the comb and her strokes grew lighter. “Caonabo intends to change some of the old laws, like the strict one on quarantine. The worst of the old epidemics burned themselves out several generations ago. The behiques can treat illness more effectively now. But people naturally fear bad things will happen if they don’t do everything exactly as they always used to do it. Change frightens people.”

“Or threatens them,” I said. “That’s why the mage Houses don’t like technology. It threatens their power. That’s why they defeated and imprisoned General Camjiata, because his legal code threatens their power, too…”

We took possession of Cook’s bedchamber next to the kitchen. Bee and I shared the bed while Rory slept on the floor beside it, resting on the pallet our man-of-all-work Pompey had used in the kitchen at night. “I never sleep alone,” he said, “it makes me nervous.”

“Hush,” said Bee, pinching out the lamp.

In the darkness the memory of Cook’s scent settled over me: She had always smelled of flour and onions, but in a comforting way, not an unpleasant one. Home rose around us, although it was dark and abandoned. We could stay the night but never truly return.

Yet the house embraced us. With Bee slumbering beside me in the old familiar way and Rory snoring softly on the floor, I slept soundly.

14

I was awakened in the morning by Bee crawling over me to get to her sketchbook. I slid deeper under the blankets as she perched on the edge of the bed and sketched. Just enough gloomy light leaked through a basement window for her to see the paper. When she had finished, she ran out to use the privy. I followed. Gray clouds promised rain.

She left me to stir the slumbering fire back into a blaze and make the morning porridge while she sat at the kitchen table, studying the sketch. In a modest tailor’s shop, two men sat cross-legged on a platform raised off the floor. Glass-paned windows spilled light over half-made garments draped across their laps. A cat sat under the platform, barely visible in the shadows. Bolts of cloth were stacked on a table next to a privacy screen. On the opposite side of the street, buildings housed a row of shops. Seen through the window directly opposite, beneath a sign that read QUEEDLE AND CLUTCH, a troll was being measured for a coat. In the distance, above snow-dusted roofs, rose two slender, square towers, each topped with what looked like a huge golden egg.