She remained on the bench, trying to understand what had happened to her, until the first drops of rain forced her inside.

“Who could ever live in such a place?” Yazi asked, wide-eyed. “You would tire yourself to fits just walking to the kitchen.”

“People who live in such places don’t walk to the kitchen,” said Qinnitan. “They have people like you and me bring their food to them.” She frowned, trying to remember which way they had turned on the inbound trip. Monarchs had been adding rooms and corridors and whole wings onto the citadel of Hierosol for so many centuries that the place was like the sea coral from one of her favorite poems by Baz’u Jev. Qinnitan entertained a brief fantasy that one day she would be able to take the boy Pigeon for a walk on the seashore without worrying she might be recognized, to see some of the mysteries that had so charmed the poet, the spiraling shells daintier than jewels, the stones polished smooth as statues. She had work to do, though, and even if she hadn’t, she couldn’t afford to loiter in the open that way.

“But look at us!” Yazi was from the Ellamish border country so she spoke fairly good Xixian, a good-hearted girl but a little slow and prone to mistakes. “We are lost already. Surely no one can find their way in such a big place. This must be the biggest house on earth!”

Qinnitan was tempted to say that she herself had once lived in the biggest house on earth, just to see Yazi’s expression, but even though she had already told Soryaza the laundry-mistress she had been an acolyte of the Hive, there was no sense in telling everyone else, especially someone as innocently loose-lipped as Yazi. The fact that Qinnitan had once lived in the Royal Seclusion, where she had been one of the fortunate few who had their food brought to them by hurrying, silent servants, was certainly not going to be mentioned either, although the irony of the present conversation was not lost on her.

“I know it’s back this way,” she said instead. “Remember, we came down a long hall full of pictures just after we went through that garden?”

“What garden?”

“You didn’t…? Where you could see the ocean and everything?” She sighed. “Never mind.” Yazi was like a dog that way—the girl had been talking about something, a dream she had, or a dream she wanted to have, and hadn’t even noticed the garden, the one time today they had been out from under the castle roof. Qinnitan had noticed, of course. She had spent too much time kept like a nightingale in a wicker cage to ignore the glorious moments when she was free beneath the gods’ great sky. “Never mind,” she said again. “Just follow me.”

“Breasts of Surigali, where have you two been?” Soryaza stood with her hands on her hips, looking as though she might pick up one of the massive washing tubs and dump its scalding contents all over the truants. “You were just supposed to take those up to the upstairs ewery and come straight back.”