The person with long, long fair hair down nearly to their ankles, the same colourless cream as their robe, said, “The Blood techniques you perform as part of your shows? The showers of sparks and spelling of words?”

“Those are just party tricks,” Orfeus said slowly. Hardly likely to tar their reputation. “Any showman could do them.”

“You shouldn’t be able to,” Margaux said. “There is no record of the Blood in your family, on either side.”

Orfeus froze. After too long a moment, she said calmly, “Your records are impressive.” Her burns and cuts had mostly healed and her head pounded only distantly, but once more it felt hard to breathe. Cold and terrible rage threatened to run wild with her tongue.

Why would they do such a thing? Who would think it was acceptable? Maylis with her light curls and soft hands, who still had a slight accent despite her family living in Gallia for two generations. Basma, with her beautiful eyes and stories, always wearing the headscarf that Orfeus worried that she was disappointed Orfeus didn’t wear too.

It was one thing to research her mothers as an extension of Orfeus’s life, to understand her music; she would accept that. That they exhumed her mothers’ names for something as petty as thinking her an unworthy heir to magic sat bitter in her stomach.

“A pity my family is dead, then, as I imagine you’d like to interrogate them,” Orfeus snapped. Even the calmer dark-haired Elder took a step back, eyes widening. Orfeus bit hard on her tongue. This was a beautiful city, and a rich one, and she would gain nothing by making everyone here her enemy.

Orfeus cut a short bow, as deep as she could make herself, and straightened. “Forgive me,” she said tonelessly, taking half a step back. “I’m tired from my travels.”

“Our representative was told to deliver you first to a wayhouse if you needed rest,” Margaux said, looking back over Orfeus’s shoulder to the corner where Rivasoa sat, by the small pond, with her little book.

Orfeus didn’t glance that way. “Your representative isn’t to blame. I’m a corrupting influence, after all. Right? I’ve got bad Blood in me.” Bitter thoughts and rankled weeds grew easy, easy, easy in her heart, and she wanted to spit spite at all these preening long-lived better-than-hers.

“You’re being melodramatic,” Margaux said.

Orfeus gestured wildly. “You know perfectly well I’m a performer!”