“Our current Duke of Mandelion, Vocado Avourlace, and his sister, Lady Tamarind, were born in exile in Jottland, where their family had loyally followed the Twin Queens and their mother. As a youth he spent much time in the company of the young queens, and when he came of age he began wooing them with zeal. The problem was that he was unmistakably courting them both, for in truth there was little to choose between them.

“At last the sisters made it clear that he must pick one bride. He chose Peri, and at first there was general rejoicing. However, Peri wanted to know why she had been chosen, and the Duke admitted that he had chosen Peri because Meriel’s extra finger frightened him. After this confession, Peri ended the engagement. Some say that she was angry at the slight to her sister, but others say that she still felt the finger to be part of her, and would not marry a man who could not accept it.

“Even now, back in his homeland, it is said that the Duke spends every waking moment dwelling on thoughts of the Twin Queens. At mealtimes he arranges his chicken bones and cherry stones into pairs, and he sighs over the coins that display the queens’ identical heads: Meriel on one side, facing right, Peri on the other, facing left. And he still dreams that if he rebuilds Mandelion with a beautiful symmetry worthy of the Twin Queens, they will forgive him, and come to rule the Realm with Mandelion as their capital.”

“Will they ever come to Mandelion, do you think?” Mosca asked.

“Perhaps, on a day when the sun turns to soup,” Clent remarked drily. “In the meantime, it looks ill for the Duke’s line, for he will marry none but they.”

“But Lady Tamarind might have children! Is she married?”

Clent gave Mosca an astute glance, and she blushed, fearing that he would see how the noblewoman had left her spellbound.

“No, nor can I find that she has any suitor or favorite.”

“Why? Is it because of her scar?”

“Lady Tamarind wears her scar like a flower,” Clent said softly. “If she is unwed, it is because she would have it so.”

“Where did Lady Tamarind get her scar?”

“That I do not know, though I believe she was already marked when she came back from Jottland as a child of thirteen.”

Lady Tamarind was at that very moment nearing the end of her long journey home from the Capital to Mandelion’s Eastern Spire. She had disembarked from her carriage, and a sedan now bore her through the Honeycomb Courts toward the spire. Although she was quite unconscious that she was the subject of fascinated discussion in the marriage house, her thoughts also happened to be focused upon the scar that marked her cheek.