“You didn’t know?”

“No. The name-day, not the birth-day, mattered to my family, and my name-day was Midsummer Eve. My villagers knew, though, and lured me out to celebrate it their way. If I had not been able to tell them of the prince’s messenger, I’d be there yet.” Dorrin looked at Paks; it was still hard to believe this young woman—so young—had been through so much. She still had the same open, engaging grin that had made her such an attractive recruit, but the gray eyes had wisdom beyond her years. “So—you are on your way to the coronation in Vérella, I suppose? I’m glad you came this way.”

“No,” Paks said, picking up another stuffed pastry. “One coronation a year is enough. I came here because I felt it.”

“Felt—”

“I can’t explain. I had to come, as I had to leave Chaya and wander the woods in Lyonya awhile. This is delicious—do you eat like this every night?”

“Not quite,” Dorrin said. “The cook made something special for the prince’s courier and, I suppose, you.”

“This place is huge,” Paks said. “The entrance hall’s as big as some granges.” She eyed the dish of plums and then looked straight at Dorrin. “Are you happy, Captain—Duke, I mean?”

“Happy?” Dorrin bit back the comment she’d almost made—happiness was a child’s wish, not an adult’s duty—but Paks was clearly happy, and she was no naive child. Paks’s easy patience pulled answers out of her. “Sometimes. I had forgotten how beautiful it could be. Not the house; the house is …” She shook her head and left it there. “But the land. The land and the people. It’s softer land than Kieri’s—the king’s—was. Settled longer, cared for longer. The kitchen orchard’s thick with fruit this year. But as I said in Chaya, I never meant to come back. They didn’t want me back. It was …” Again she stopped, feeling tears burning her eyes.

“Their evil is not your fault, Captain,” Paks said.

“I know, but—” In halting phrases, at first, Dorrin told Paks what had happened, the discovery of Verrakai’s use of others, even their own children, to transfer personalities from one to another, the traps and poisons she’d had to disarm before she dared sleep in any of the beds. The deaths.

“I had to do it,” she said. “And I know that’s what my family would say about what they did. They had to, it was … expedient. If I had not, they would have killed others—and how many there are loose in the land I do not know, since I don’t know if all the transfers are recorded in the family book.”

Paks reached out and touched her hand; Dorrin felt a rush of goodwill and strength. “You have a hard task,” Paks said. “But you are faithful; that much is clear. Your people love you already, or they would not have celebrated your birthday.”

“I am better than my uncle, under whom they suffered,” Dorrin said. “Their gratitude is too great for the little I have done so far. It is all undoing—undoing curses, unsetting traps—before I can do anything real,” Dorrin said. “Though today—” She paused.