Qinnitan set the mirror on her knee and stared at the reflection. To her despair, she saw that her unruly hair had escaped the scarf again right where the red streak emerged. As if she had not already left enough of a trail across the citadel! She no longer had access to the cosmetics and dyes the women had used in the Seclusion, so she had done her best to disguise the flame-colored patch with soot from the candles and the laundry fireplaces, but working in that damp, hot room ensured that the soot didn’t work for long. She would have to get a bigger scarf, or cut her hair off entirely. Some of the older women here wore their hair very short, especially if they were past childbearing age. Maybe no one would think it too odd if she did the same…

“Nira, isn’t it?” a scratchy voice asked.

Startled, Qinnitan looked up, hurriedly tucking her hair back under the scarf. It was the old woman from the laundry, the one with the burned face and missing teeth who had only been working there a few days. “Yes?”

“It’s me, Losa. I thought that was you when I saw you across the room. And is this your little brother?”

Pigeon was looking at the old woman with mistrust, his usual expression with strangers. “Yes, his name is Nonem.”

“Ah, lovely. I didn’t mean to bother you, child, I was just…”

At that moment, just to add to the madcap air of sudden festivity, Yazi approached, followed by a young girl in a very fine dress—the kind of dress the laundrywomen only saw when they were called upon to clean things from the upper apartments of the citadel.

“Nira, I just…” Yazi saw the old woman. “Losa! What are you doing here?”

The woman smiled, then quickly pulled her lips together to hide her ruined teeth. “Oh, I couldn’t get out the gate to get home. All kinds of soldiers coming in, and such a fuss! Wagons, oxen, people shouting. Someone said they were Sessians hired by the lord protector. I thought I’d ask if I could stay here.”

“We’ll talk to the dormitory mistress,” said Yazi, “but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” At any ordinary time Yazi would have pressed the old woman for details and it would have been the subject of the evening’s conversation all over the dormitory, but now something even more exciting was clearly pressing on her. “Nira, there’s someone here to see you.”

Qinnitan was beginning to feel quite overwhelmed. She turned to the very young girl in the beautiful blue dress and velvet petticoat. A crowd of women was beginning to gather as people came to see what had brought such an apparition into the dormitory.

“Yes?”

“I am to take you to my mistress,” the girl said. “You are…Nira?”

Qinnitan’s confusion quickly turned to panic, but she couldn’t very well deny it. She struggled to frame the Hierosoline words. “Who…who is your mistress?”