Ignazio let out a soft breath, carrying a mist of regret. “The more power a leader wields, Amalia, the harder it becomes for him or her to value individual people over results. The doge has to consider the welfare of millions of imperial citizens, after all. How do you balance that against the happiness of one person? Or even their life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do they always need to be in conflict? Can’t you do both—take care of the Empire as a whole and have care for its individual people as well?”

“Perhaps.” Ignazio shrugged. “But it’s impossible to rule without getting some blood on your hands. When you ascend to the Council of Nine, you will see.”

There was a certain ominous coloration to the pity in his voice. I hunched my shoulders.

“At this rate, if I can make it until I ascend to the Council without getting blood on my hands, I will consider myself blessed by the Grace of Luck.”

In the afternoon, a light rain began to fall, and Zaira and Istrella both joined us in the coach. Zaira sat with Ignazio, and began relaying to him some of the gossip the coachman had told her. Istrella sat next to me, hauled up a bag onto the seat between us, and pulled out a box full of artifice bits to work with in her lap.

I peered at what she was doing. “Are you making jesses?”

“This?” Istrella held up a thin braid of golden wire. Her own jess gleamed on her wrist. “No, no. Not yet. I’m learning the basic principles, though. The doge’s Master Artificer thought I might have the potential to do it someday. It’s quite an honor.”

Zaira’s voice faltered for a heartbeat in the midst of describing a shrinekeeper’s drunken indiscretion; she flashed a sidelong frown at Istrella.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “I didn’t realize they let anyone but the Master Artificer work on those.”

“I had to apprentice to him for a year and make about seventeen oaths of secrecy before he’d start teaching me.” Istrella teased out an end of golden wire and began carefully twisting it into a tiny spiral. “I’m going to have to destroy this after I finish it, even though it’s just practice; I’m not allowed to leave any intact pieces lying around.”

I tried to unravel the complex weave with my eyes. “That looks like the core braid, the part that suppresses magic.”