But Phalue was already making her way to the kitchen and the cellar. Noises and smells assaulted her senses as soon as she opened the door. Servants rushed back and forth, preparing food for the petitioners – mostly things that could be eaten by hand. Egg tarts, steamed buns, sticky rice dumplings, skewered pieces of chicken. Phalue took a step into the chaos and then froze.

A servant was stepping out of the arch that led to the cellar.

It wasn’t time for her father’s meals, nor had she ordered anyone to attend to him. She waited until the servant had returned to tending a pot before she stepped fully into the kitchen and made for the stairs. It was something Ranami would have done, not Phalue – was her wife’s suspicious nature rubbing off on her?

The light from above gave way to lamplight as she descended the stairs, casting everything in an orange hue. Her father was where she’d last left him: sitting at his desk in his cell, reading and sipping a steaming cup of tea. He looked up when she approached.

“Someone was just here,” Phalue said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

He lifted the cup. “I asked for tea; a servant brought it.”

It was a reasonable enough explanation. She hadn’t told the servants to ignore him, to treat him poorly or to shun any of his requests. “How’s your health?”

He coughed into his elbow. “The same – but you’re not here to ask after that, are you, dearest?”

Might as well be direct; she was good at that. “Do we have any sort of agreements with Gaelung? Your records aren’t exactly in good order.”

“Is there a reason you’re asking?”

A prickle of unease lifted the hairs at the back of her neck. Why did he need to know? She tamped it down. Ranami was rubbing off on her. The man was imprisoned; he couldn’t do much from a cell. “Gaelung is asking for aid. The construct army is on its way to their shores and the Emperor cannot provide enough protection. They want us to send our guards to help bolster their defenses.”

He looked into his mug of tea as though staring at it could turn it to wine. “We have no such agreement with Gaelung. They must be desperate to imply that we might. I’ll wager they’ve sent the same missive to as many other islands they could count, hoping that those that feel no obligation to the Emperor might feel some obligation to them. No one else will send aid; why should Nephilanu? We’d be sending our people to their deaths.”