They approached a pair of double doors. Arched and as high as the hall, they were presently ajar. Allegra held her breath and felt her heart quicken slightly. She had to admit that she still found a bit of intrigue invigorating. She peered through the gap between the doors.

The throne room was immense, with two ornate chairs sitting atop a dais, a crescent-shaped console encircling them in the front and a grand staircase leading to the royal bedchamber behind. Allegra saw her mother, Queen Nor, seated in her throne, upright in every sense of the word. Her father, King Xander, sat next to her, slightly slouched, his head resting upon his hand. Hovering behind her parents, as usual, was Chancellor Olaf. He was as long, straight and polished as the stick Allegra imagined was shoved up his backside.

Even at this distance, Allegra could see the ruddiness of her father’s cheeks. She knew that the rosy blush was not a result of exposure to the suns but, rather, could be attributed to an ever-increasing exposure to terrazka, the liquor distilled from terranuts.

Xander rarely, if ever, ventured outside. Lately, he worried away his hours with little more than the counsel of Olaf and a bottle to stem the tide of time and circumstance. Unsurprisingly, Allegra found satisfaction in the fact that her father seemed to be as much a prisoner as she.

“The Four Tellers of the Tiered Cities!”

Allegra took an involuntary step backward, startled by Chancellor Olaf’s proclamation. So snug was Geneva behind her that Allegra bumped into her and stepped on her foot, causing Geneva to stifle a gasp and a giggle. Allegra glared over her shoulder and gave her a not-so-gentle elbow in the midsection. As the guards opened the doors opposite her, Allegra turned her full attention to the room.

The Four Tellers flowed into the throne room in a swirl of fabric and mystery.

The man in front, The Why of Mist Tier, was most familiar to Allegra, but only because he resided in the palace and was a sometime shadow of Olaf and her father as they paced the palace corridors. She had never directly encountered the other three magi seers—The Where of Middle Tier, The When of Back Tier and The Which of Front Tier—and had only viewed them from a distance whenever they were summoned from their outlying tiers.

There were four major urban centers on Mano, named for their relative proximity to the capital city of Mist Tier. They were referred to as tiers because they all featured the tiered construction of the traditional Manolithic ziggurats. In truth, Allegra had precious little knowledge of her own city, gleaned mostly from books and the view from her balcony. Having never even seen the palace itself in its entirety from the outside, she had to content herself with the view of the massive ziggurats that capped the cliffs along the coastline, their levels like giant steps ascending toward the heavens.

As impressive as the buildings were, it was the natural beauty outside her windows that captivated Allegra’s imagination most. The capital city had been christened Mist Tier for the constant spray that rose from the pounding surf that assaulted the base of the cliffs encircling the Ocean of Manorain. It could just as easily have been named Side Tier or Throne Tier, and in her more sardonic moments, Allegra fancied that she resided permanently in Salty Tier or Bitter Tier.