On a recent night Padrigan had met Tahr’s eyes and decided not to look away. She smiled back at him. Her eyes seemed like a hearth for the cold in him, and he wanted to be near her.

But suddenly the connection broke. In the curtain door stood Kindalana, sixteen years old and still tiny, holding a bee in her closed fist.

“I think you’d better come and care for my hand, Father. I’ve been stung.”

While Padrigan fussed over her ruptured palm, Kindalana looked at Tahr with flat disappointment. Do better, her eyes said. Do better. I will not permit a scandal between my father and the mother of a fellow Prince.

Anyway. The adults were away, Tahr on this matter of Falcrest, Padrigan on business in the city Jaro, Abdi-obdi seeing to her sprawling merchant empire and its growth in Segu. So the children ruled the high hill.

Tau-indi and Abdumasi beat on the door-plate of Kindalana’s compound with the big mallet they weren’t supposed to use. They hid. One of the groundskeepers came out to shout at them. They knew that once the groundskeep came out, he would give in to his cravings and run up the hill to pick raspberries.

When he did, they snuck inside.

“I wonder if she’s remembered my birthday.” Tau-indi looked around the beehives curiously. They almost never came inside the compound proper: usually Kindalana came out to the gate.

“Of course she’s remembered. You’re a Prince and she’s a Prince. She’d never forget a Prince’s birthday.” Abdumasi thought of something delightful and beamed with cunning. “I wonder if she’ll be rude to us! Tau, let’s make her be rude.”

“Why?” If you went to someone’s house, they had to apologize for anything possibly wrong, and Kindalana hated apologizing.

“To mess up her trim, of course.”

Tau-indi never wanted to make Kinda uncomfortable, but they also loved Abdumasi’s trickster smile. “Quick, then, find something to eat!”

They ran around the beehive and the herb gardens in their hiked-up khangas and thong sandals, dodging groundskeeps until they could snatch a carton of honeycomb. Then they went to Kindalana’s window, hoping to find her. But it was open and empty, and she’d left no sign.

“She’ll be up in the silkroom,” Abdumasi said, “reading and getting some wind.”

“You don’t know her at all, you flighty jay. She’ll be in the sun house, tanning herself and drinking raspberry water.” Kindalana had lighter skin, being from Segu, and she sometimes sunned herself to darken and beautify her look.

“Pah.” Abdumasi did not think it likely. “She’s hardly so vain.”

“She’s hardly so studious!”

They were both wrong. She sat on the boardwalk above the north slope and the lake, sketching with charcoal. Her shoulder blades moved thoughtfully.

“Psst,” Tau-indi hissed, while Abdumasi took a huge bite of stolen honeycomb. “Kindalana!”