She stood as the first sheen of dawn turned the sky purple, cold air on her face, her skin pebbled with goosebumps. Bells were ringing all over the city. Something terrible was happening.

The bells in Three Brothers began to peal while Pelaya was saying the Daybreak Prayer in the family chapel, ringing so loud that it seemed the walls might tumble down. She and her sisters, brother, and mother were all crowded into the chapel, and when Pelaya turned she almost knocked her brother Kiril off the bench.

“Zoria’s mercy!” Her mother hurried to the chapel door and handed Pelaya’s infant sister to the nurse as the bells continued to crash and clang. “It is a fire! Get the children to safety.”

“That’s not the fire bell,” Pelaya said loudly.

Despite her fear, Teloni was irritated. “How do you know?”

“Because the fire bell is only one bell, rung over and over. All the bells are ringing.”

Her mother turned to Kiril, Pelaya’s younger brother. “Go and find your father. Find out what is happening.”

“He’s not old enough.” Pelaya was too excited and frightened to stay with her mother and sisters. “I’ll go!”

She was up before her mother could stop her, heading for the chapel door. “You headstrong little beast!” her mother called. “Teloni, go with your sister, keep her out of trouble. No, Kiril, you’ll stay, now—I’ll not have all my children scattered.”

Pelaya was out the door just as Kiril’s bellow of dismay erupted, but it was still loud enough to hear even above the clangor of the bells.

“You’re wicked!” gasped Teloni, catching up to her on the first landing. “Mama said Kiril was to go.”

“Why? Because he’s a boy?” She pulled up her skirts so she wouldn’t trip over them as she hurried up the stairs. Already the stairwell and the landings were filling with people, some still half-dressed in their nightclothes, wandering out like sleepwalkers to see what the clamor was about.

“Slow down!”

“Just because you climb like a cow trying to go over a gate doesn’t mean I have to wait for you, Teli.”

“What if it is a fire?”

Pelaya rolled her eyes and began leaping the stairs two at a time. Didn’t anyone else take note of things but her? That was why she enjoyed talking to the foreign king, Olin Eddon: he paid attention to what was around him, and he complimented her cleverness when she did so too. “It’s not a fire, I told you. It’s probably the autarch attacking the city.”

Teloni slid to a stop and grabbed at the wall to keep herself from falling. “It’s what?”

“The Autarch of Xis, stupid. Don’t you ever listen to what Babba says?”

“Don’t you dare call me that—I’m your elder sister. What do you mean, the autarch…attacking?”

“Babba’s been preparing for it for months, Teli. Surely you must have noticed something.”

“Yes, but…but I didn’t think it was really going to happen. I mean, why? What does the autarch want with Hierosol?”