“Munetrun, the city house, and enough annual income to keep them both up in handsome style,” Angeline Marcosa said. “Appearances always were important to her, you know.”

“Yes …” Kit said absently. She was staring at Sereva. “But why would she do that?” she asked wonderingly. “We never had five words together without getting into an argument. There was nothing about me—nothing!—that made her proud or happy. I wasn’t even good to her. I never thought—Munetrun!”

“There’s more,” Sereva said gently. “A bequest. An annuity to your charity bank in the Lost City. A pretty good sum, too.”

Angeline Marcosa examined her papers again. “Well, the exact annual figure can’t be known until we’ve calculated the death taxes and the city taxes and—”

“But a lot,” Sereva interrupted. “I think that answers the question of whether or not you ever made her proud.”

“But I—” Kit said, and then shut her mouth hard. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think about it, or she would start crying again. These days, it seemed that the unlikeliest people loved her and the obvious ones did not care for her at all. How would she ever sort it out, how would she ever learn whom to trust and whom to love?

“Yes, well, the disposition of Munetrun and the city house are really the smallest details of the will,” said Angeline Marcosa briskly. “There’s Govedere and Fairenen and Glosadel, as well as the farmlands, and I think it would be just as well if we went over those now.”

“Of course,” Sereva said, and Kit nodded, but she didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the lawyer’s words. In fact, she might as well not have been in the room at all. She was remembering the wild green tangle of woods that formed the southern border of Munetrun, the dense interwoven branches that built a mysterious, inviting castle of living forest. She had spent one whole summer there, when her father left her without explanation with his dead wife’s relatives. She had been miserable when he left, inconsolable, actually, until Granmama took her to Munetrun. But she had loved that verdant estate, overrun with wildlife and impossible to tame into any semblance of lawn or garden. She had loved it, and so had Granmama, and now it was hers. She shook her head and tried to listen to the conversation again, but her thoughts would not stay on the spoken words. Another strange twist to her life; this was not a map she would have sketched in no matter how wild her imagination. Quietly, so they would not notice, she began crying again anyway.

*   *   *