“Well, keep ’em to yourself,” Dorna snapped. “Now stop your sitting and help me out—”

Janel lifted a small metal box from a closet and held it close. “It’s fine, Dorna. I’ve found what we need.” She set the chest down on a table and opened the lid.

The box contained jewelry. Precious metal chains, a carved shell cameo, a jade brooch with matching hairpins, a carnelian pendant carved with a lion, a fire opal necklace, and a string of perfect dark pearls.

Janel sighed with relief. “I’m so glad they’re still here. I worried my grandfather had already sold them.”

“Why didn’t he?” Dorna asked. “Might have helped with the liens.” She’d stopped bickering with Sir Baramon when Janel announced her discovery; the jewels had distracted her from her errand downstairs.

“Because it would have been theft. These belonged to my mother. Now they belong to me.” She closed the box back up again and offered it to Dorna. “Would you and Sir Baramon sell these?”

Dorna blinked. “But you just said they belonged to your mother.”

“Jewelry isn’t what I need to remember about her.”

Dorna stared at her with bright eyes. Then she ducked her head and snapped her fingers at Sir Baramon. “Well, come on, then. Let’s go see if Gerios still buys as well as sells baubles from that shop of his.” She took the box and began to walk back up the stairs leading to the entrance.

“Don’t you snap your fingers at me, woman. Stop talking to me like I’m your lackey.”

“Oh, you should be so lucky.” Dorna snapped her fingers again. She turned to Janel and rapped her knuckles against the door in a pattern. “When we come back, we’ll make this sound. So’s you know it’s us.”

“Thank you, Dorna.” Janel turned back to sorting. She returned the boxes, shut the doors, and went to the next closet.

“Is there anything I might do to help?” Brother Qown asked.

Janel paused. She pointed to a desk pushed up against a wall. “There may be letters in there. Correspondence. Even a record of my grandfather’s liens would be more than I have now.” She smiled. “My creditors could say I owe any sum. I have no way to deny their claims.”

Brother Qown nodded and began to search through the drawers until he could stand it no longer.

“What happened on the bridge—”

Silence greeted his outburst. Brother Qown had just decided Janel wasn’t going to pick up his dropped sentence when she said, “You’re disappointed in me.”

“I just don’t understand. You interfered in Barsine…”

“I shouldn’t have. Barsine isn’t one of my banners. Someone would argue I had no right. They wouldn’t be wrong.”

“I just don’t—” His throat felt thick. “I don’t understand.”