“Yes, Mother,” Jovis said from behind me, his voice strained. “That’s her. You’re meant to call her Eminence.”

She looked me up and down. “You’re completely soaked,” she said. “You’ll get sick if you stay that way. I’ll make you some hot soup. It always helped my boys.” And then she turned and strode down the corridor with purpose.

I watched her go, a little flabbergasted. “Your mother is here?”

Jovis coughed. “I didn’t really have the chance to tell you. It’s what kept me from making it to dinner.”

“And your father?”

He grimaced. “Being an idiot on Anau. There’s an outbreak of bog cough there. It’s put my friends and family in danger, including him. I don’t suppose you can…?”

I shook my head. “I sent most of Imperial’s store of caro nut oil to Iloh on Riya. I didn’t think Nephilanu would withhold their shipment. I can ask Ikanuy if there’s any to spare, but I left only enough to hold Imperial over.”

He seemed to deflate, his head bowing. “I thought as much.”

“I’ll do what I can to procure caro nuts from somewhere else. Your mother can stay in your room and charter a ship back home once we reach Imperial.”

Jovis screwed up his face. “Thank you. And don’t mind her manners, please – Anau is very small and she knows everyone there.”

I watched her back disappear around the corner. “No, it’s fine,” I said, and found I meant it. There’d been something familiar in the way she’d treated me, and it made me think of Bayan. We’d been friends so very, very briefly.

My meeting with Ranami and Phalue, and the attack on my handmaids made it clear: I had work to do. “You’re scholar-trained,” I said to Jovis. “Meet me in the mess hall. I have orders to write and I could use a second eye on them.”

I gathered pen and paper from my room. Above, footsteps pounded as the ship was made ready for departure.

I found chaos in the mess hall. Jovis’s mother was in the kitchen, ordering the cook about as though he were her assistant. And the cook, to my surprise, went about meekly gathering the things she said she needed.

I raised an eyebrow at Jovis.

“She’s a cook too,” he said, as though that explained everything. “A good one.”

I wasn’t going to stop her. Indeed, I wasn’t sure she could be stopped.

One of my servants passed me a sealed letter. The phoenix seal was unbroken. There were only a few people who had access to the phoenix seal. Ikanuy was one. My general Yeshan was another. My heartbeat quickened as I slipped a finger beneath the seal and broke it.

It wasn’t good news.