Kordira was a true beauty. Her skin was fair, her eyes and hair black as night, her lips red and sensuous, without any sign of cosmetics. She wore a plain blue gown and a rainbow-colored knitted shawl over her shoulders. Her hair was in a braided coronet around her head, woven with blue ribbon. She wore no jewelry, and her nails, though well trimmed, were stained from her work.

“Ah, here’s your friend, Lord Thero!” she said with a smile that would melt the hardest of hearts. “Please join us, Lord Micum. We’ve just started.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“Oh, I have no title. Please, call me Kordira. Everyone around here does.”

“Then you must call me Micum.” He took the empty chair and noted how graceful her hands were as she filled a delicate tea dish for him from an equally elegant pot and passed the sweets plate.

“I was just telling your friend how grateful I am to Princess Klia for allowing me to remain on Kouros,” she said. “I’ve been here for nine years and can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s so beautiful.”

“I can understand that,” Micum replied, balancing his tea dish carefully in his big, callused hands.

“But I think that’s not what you two came to speak with me about.”

Micum had planned to give her the complaint about his bad leg, but Thero seemed to have the situation well in hand.

“Princess Klia brought me here to help investigate the death of the previous governor,” the wizard told her, the pleasantries evidently out of the way. “I visited the madhouse last night, and spoke with Captain Sedge. The man seems completely unhinged by what he saw that day. Have you had any contact with him?”

“Yes, I attended him when they brought him down from Menosi. Believe it or not, he’s much calmer than he was. He tried several times to kill himself that first week, and anyone who came near him. But I doubt he’ll ever fully recover. It’s tragic. Sedge is a good man. I treated his little daughter for thrush soon after he moved his family here. He has three children, and his wife’s six months gone with another.”

“I’d like to help him, if I can. The princess has ordered me to make a full examination but he’s much too agitated as he is. I wondered if you might assist me with your healing arts. Perhaps between the two of us, we might be able to get a better idea of the state of his mind.”

“I wasn’t aware that you Orëska practiced medicine.”

“Not as such, but I might be able to draw from his mind something of what occurred that day.”

“I see.” She considered this for a moment. “Very well. I gave him brandy drugged with a distillation of sticky rush last time. Will that interfere with your magic?”

“It shouldn’t.”

“Give me a few moments to prepare the draught and we can go at once. Please, finish your tea. I’ll send Cyra up to fetch you when everything is prepared.”