I brushed past her and elbowed my way in between my brothers near the front of the group. I’m a decent-sized fellow, tall enough to give men pause, but I don’t normally care to stand by Martus and Darin. They make me look small and, with nothing to set us apart, all with the same dark-gold hair and hazel eyes, I get referred to as “the little one.” That I don’t like. On this occasion, though, I was prepared to be overlooked. It wasn’t just being in the throne room that made me nervous. Nor even because of Grandmother’s pointed disapproval. It was the blind-eye woman. She scares the hell out of me.

I first saw her when they brought me before the throne on my fifth birthday, my name day, flanked by Martus and Darin in their church finest, Father in his cardinal’s hat, sober despite the sun having passed its zenith, my mother in silks and pearls, a clutch of churchmen and court ladies forming the periphery. The Red Queen sat forwards in her great chair booming out something about her grandfather’s grandfather, Jalan, the Fist of the Emperor, but it passed me by—I’d seen her. An ancient woman, so old it turned my stomach to look at her. She crouched in the shadow of the throne, hunched up so she’d be hidden away if you looked from the other side. She had a face like paper that had been soaked then left to dry, her lips a greyish line, cheekbones sharp. Clad in rags and tatters, she had no place in that throne room, at odds with the finery, the fire-bronzed guards and the glittering retinue come to see my name set in place upon me. There was no motion in the crone; she could almost have been a trick of the light, a discarded cloak, an illusion of lines and shade.

“. . . Jalan?” The Red Queen stopped her litany with a question.

I had answered with silence, tearing my gaze from the creature at her side.

“Well?” Grandmother narrowed her regard to a sharp point that held me.

Still I had nothing. Martus had elbowed me hard enough to make my ribs creak. It hadn’t helped. I wanted to look back at the old woman. Was she still there? Had she moved the moment my eyes left her? I imagined how she’d move. Quick like a spider. My stomach made a tight knot of itself.

“Do you accept the charge I have laid upon you, child?” Grandmother asked, attempting kindness.

My glance flickered back to the hag. Still there, exactly the same, her face half-turned from me, fixed on Grandmother. I hadn’t noticed her eye at first, but now it drew me. One of the cats at the Hall had an eye like that. Milky. Pearly almost. Blind, my nurse called it. But to me it seemed to see more than the other eye.

“What’s wrong with the boy? Is he simple?” Grandmother’s displeasure had rippled through the court, silencing their murmurs.