When Chemoise got news that her betrothed was attacked while on guard duty, gutted by some spice merchant, it was as if the dawn sun went black, losing power to warm her. Or it was as if she’d turned to pale clay, her flesh losing all color, no longer able to hold her spirit.

Princess Iome Sylvarresta watched Chemoise, her Maid of Honor, her dearest friend, desperately wishing for a way to console her. If Lady Jollenne had been here, she’d have known what to do. But the matron had been called away for a few weeks to care for her grandmother, who’d had a bad fall.

Iome, her Days, and Chemoise had been up at dawn, sitting near the huge, U-shaped storyteller’s stone in the Queen’s topiary garden, reading the latest romance poems by Adallé, when Corporal Clewes broke in on their reverie.

He told the news: A scuffle with a drunken merchant. An hour or more past. Cat’s Alley. Sergeant Dreys. Fought nobly. Near death. Slit from crotch to heart. Called for Chemoise as he fell.

Chemoise took the news stoically, if statues can be said to be stoic. She sat stiffly on the stone bench, her hazel eyes unfocused, her long, wheat-colored hair stirring in the wind. She’d been weaving a chain of daisies as Iome read. Now she laid them in her lap, on a skirt of coral-colored chiffon. Sixteen and heartbroken. She was to have married in ten days.

Yet she dared not show her emotions. A proper lady should be able to bear such news lightly. She waited for Iome’s permission to go to her fiancé.

“Thank you, Clewes,” Iome said when the corporal continued standing at attention. “Where is Dreys now?”

“We laid him out on the common, outside the King’s Tower. I didn’t want to move him any farther. The others are laid out down by the river.”

“The others?” Iome asked. She was sitting beside Chemoise; now she took the girl’s hand. It had gone cold, so cold.

Clewes was an old soldier to have such a low station. His trim beard was stiff as oat stubble. It poked out from under the broken strap of his iron pikeman’s cap.

“Aye, Princess,” he said, remembering to address Iome properly for the first time since he’d intruded into the garden. “Two of the City Guard died in the fight. Poll the Squire and Sir Beauman.”

Iome turned to Chemoise. “Go to him,” she said.

The girl needed no further urging. She leapt up and ran down the path through the topiaries to the little wooden Bailey Gate, opened it and disappeared round the stone wall.

Iome dared not stay long in the corporal’s presence alone, with no one other than the Days, who stood quietly a few paces off. It would not be proper. But she had questions to ask him.

Iome stood.