“No,” said the king. “I want to read these first. You’ve got to have respect for the dead.”

“I do have respect for the dead but the sooner I read the report, the sooner I can get on with—”

“Alright,” said the king, peeling off pages from the back of the letter until he reached the first page of the report. He slapped these pages down on the table in front of Clarence. “Happy now?”

Clarence purred.

* * *

The young woman waiting in Iona’s office looked deeply unusual although Iona couldn’t pin down exactly what it was about her. She was smallish and sharp-featured, and she was mostly dressed in shades of gray. Her blond hair fell in ringlets from under a red hat. Her clothes were odd—they didn’t look like they were made of hemp, which led Iona to wonder what exactly they were made of. She was young enough to make Iona feel very old.

The young woman stood up and took off her hat as Iona entered and Iona told her to sit back down again. Iona walked around behind her desk and lowered herself unsteadily into her own chair. Then she leaned back and asked the young woman her name.

“Alyssa,” she replied.

Iona welcomed her and asked why she had come.

Alyssa leaned an elbow on the chair’s armrest and leaned her head on her fist. The young woman wore a bracelet with a series of small unfamiliar objects attached to it, which jangled distractingly. “I’d like some tuition.”

“My classes are open to everyone.”

Alyssa smiled awkwardly. “I was hoping you could give me some one-to-one sessions? I work in planning, you see, and the classes don’t give us much grounding in the practical side—they only really talk about zoning space. I don’t have time for the full course but I’d like a sort of idiot’s guide.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Alyssa raised her eyebrows hopefully. “Does that mean you couldn’t do anything like it now?”

Iona thought for a moment. She had learned to accept clashes with the planning department as par for the course: they didn’t fully understand how her job worked and didn’t try to. Iona had learned to anticipate their foibles and work around them. It seemed churlish to turn away someone who wanted to know more. “I suppose I could do it. But there are lots of other people you could ask.”

“But you’re the best. Everyone learned everything they know from you.”

Iona laughed. “Who told you that?”

Alyssa shrugged. “Everyone.”

It was true that Iona was the leading architect in the city and had been for a very long time. But times had changed, the city was bigger, its needs were bigger. They still kept her on at the school and she still designed as many buildings as she ever did, but the work had to be shared between more people these days and there were now many others just as skilled as she was. She sometimes vaguely floated the idea of retiring but it was always laughed off. She’d be here until she dropped. Which was fine by her, she’d be ever so bored at home.