A mouse, she thought. Climbed up the back of the tapestry and it’s back in the roof by now. Poor thing was probably startled half to death to have someone walk into this room—the place has been empty for more than a year.

She wondered if she dared open the shuttered doors of King Olin’s bedroom balcony. She itched to look back at the castle, half-afraid that it too would have become insubstantial, but caution won out. She made her way back through the room, the bed naked of blankets, a thin powdering of dust on every surface, as if it were the tomb of some ancient prophet where no one dared touch anything. In an ordinary year the doors would have been thrown wide to air the room as the servants bustled through, sweeping and cleaning. There would have been fresh flowers in the vase on the writing desk (only yellow ragwort if it was late in the season) and water in the washing jug. Instead, her father was trapped in a room somewhere that was probably smaller than this—maybe a bleak cell like the hole in which Shaso had been imprisoned. Did Olin have a window to look out, a view—or only dark walls and fading memories of his home?

It did not bear thinking about. So many things these days did not bear thinking about.

“I thought you said he had barely eaten,” Briony said, nodding toward Shaso. She held out the sack. “The dried fish is gone. Was it you? There were three pieces left when I saw last.”

Ena looked in the sack, then smiled. “I think we have made a gift.”

“A gift? What do you mean? To whom?”

“To the small folk—the Air Lord’s children.”

Briony shook her head in irritation. “Made a gift to the rats and mice, more likely. I think I just saw one.” She did not hold with such silly old tales—it was what the cooks and maids said every time something went missing: “Oh, it must have been the little folk, Highness. The Old Ones must’ve took it.” Briony had a sudden pang, knowing what Barrick would have said about such an idea, the familiar mockery that would have tinged his voice. She missed him so fiercely that tears welled in her eyes.

A moment later she had to admit the irony of it: she was mourning her brother, who would have poured scorn on the idea of “the small folk”…because he was off fighting the fairies. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose,” she said to Ena. “Surely we will find something to eat in Marrinswalk.”

Ena nodded. “And perhaps the small folk will bring us luck in return for the food—perhaps they will call on Pyarin Ky’vos to lend us fair winds. They are his favorites after all, just as my folk belong to Egye-Var.”

Briony shook her head in doubt, then caught herself. Who was she, who had fought against a murderous demon and barely survived, to make light of what others said about the gods? She herself, although she prayed carefully and sincerely to Zoria every day, had never believed Heaven to be as active in people’s lives as others seemed to think—but at the moment she and her family needed all the help they could find. “You remind me, Ena. We must make an offering at the Erivor shrine before we go.”