“New?” The round-faced girl laughed. “You’ve only been here a tennight yourself.”

“But so many! Rabbit, and that old toothless woman, and the one with the fat legs…”

“Oh, listen to you! Not everyone’s a skinny little thing like you, Nira. As it happens, Soryaza told me she’s hiring more because of the war.”

“The war?”

“Don’t you listen to anybody? There’s a war coming, everyone says so. The autarch’s going to send ships. They’ll never break this place, of course—no one ever has. But the lord protector has called in troops from Krace and…and…and other places.” She flushed, her tone of authority momentarily compromised. “And so we’re going to be having more work.”

Qinnitan felt a sudden chill—touched by a ghost, her family had always called it. She had heard rumors but had not given them much credence—as the continent’s greatest seaport, Hierosol seemed to breathe rumors like air, to serve them as meat and drink. A new continent discovered in the western oceans, one said. So much gold discovered on an island near Ulos that the overladen boat sank on the way back. Fairy armies marching in the north. The Autarch of Xis preparing to conquer all Eion. Who was to know what was truth and what was fancy?

“The…autarch…?” she said now. Memories of his pale, mad eyes, never more than a moment away from her thoughts at the best of times, now pushed their way front and center. Is it me? she wondered. Is it to find me, to torture me for running away? It was silly, unbearably self-important, even to consider it, but she couldn’t shake off the idea: she had seen enough of Sulepis to know he was a man of incomprehensible whims.

No, she told herself. He and his father and his father’s father have wanted to set their heel on Eion for years, especially Hierosol. She had heard it talked of enough in the Seclusion. This is only more of the same, if it’s even true. And if he is coming, well, the walls will defeat him. And if they don’t…

Then I will be gone. I escaped him once, I will escape him again. Despite her terror, she felt a stubborn little glow inside her, a heat like a burning coal. Or die. But one way or another, he won’t have me…

“Nira?” Yazi was pulling at her sleeve. “Pay attention, girl! If Soryaza sees you staring at nothing that way, she’ll whip us both.”

Qinnitan bent to the washing, but it was hard to keep her thoughts on the sheets and soapy water.

As Qinnitan walked with Yazi at sunset across the wide space of the Echoing Mall, she had a sudden feeling of being observed, troubling as an insect flying too near her head. She looked back and at first saw only the other washerwomen and ordinary working folk of the citadel dispersing to the outer gates or their cramped quarters within the great fortress itself; then a movement at the corner of her eye, where the newly-lit torches lined one of the colonnades, made her turn all the way around. A smear of sideways movement, at odds with the rest of the crowd, arrested her attention. She felt sure someone had stepped back into the colonnade just as she looked. Still, did it mean something, even so?