“Aha.” Miriam nodded. “And so, when I arrived…”

“You’re a countess!” Brilliana insisted. “Traveling without companions! It’s a joke, a position of contempt! Ser Hjorth sent me to dwell with you in this drafty decaying pile with a leaking roof—as a punishment to me and an insult to you. He thinks himself a most funny man, to lay the glove against a cheek that does not even understand the intent behind the insult.”

“Let’s carry on.” Miriam surprised herself by reaching out and taking Brilliana’s arm, but the younger woman merely smiled and walked by her side as she headed toward a small undecorated side door. “What did you do to offend the Baron?”

“I wanted to go across to the other side,” Brilliana said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen the education and polish and the source of everything bright in the world. I know I have not the talent myself, but surely someone can take me there? Is that too much to ask? I’ve a mother who saw miracles in her youth: carriages that fly and ships that sail against the wind, roads as wide as the Royal Mile and as long as a country, cabinets that show you events from afar. Why should I not have this, but for an accident of birth?” The anger was running close to the surface, and Miriam could feel it through her arm.

She paused next to the small door and looked Brilliana in the eye. “Believe me, if I could gift you with my talent I would, and thank you for taking it from me,” she said.

“Oh! But that’s not what I meant—” Brilliana’s cheeks colored.

Miriam smiled crookedly. “Did your mother by any chance send you away because you pestered her to take you over to the other side one time too often? And did Oliver banish you here for the same reason?”

“Yes,” Brilliana nodded reluctantly. “A lady is someone who never knowingly causes pain to others,” she said quietly. “But what about causing pain to one’s self?”

“I think—” Miriam looked at her, as if for the first time: twenty-two years old, skin like milk and blonde hair, blue eyes, a puzzled, slightly angry expression, a couple of small craterlike scars marring the line of her otherwise perfect jaw. Wearing a slim black dress and a scarf around her hair, a silver necklace set with pearls around her neck, she looked too—tense was the word Miriam was looking for—to fit in here. But give her a jacket and briefcase and nobody would look twice at her in a busy downtown rush hour. “I think you have too low an opinion of yourself, Brill,” she said slowly. “What’s through this door, do you know?”

“It’ll be the way up to the roof.” She frowned, puzzled. “Locked, of course.”