The door opened almost immediately. Momma K’s maid looked almost as surprised as Kylar was. She was an old woman, wearing a shift, with a shawl around her shoulders. “Well, good morning, my lord. If you aren’t a sight. I couldn’t sleep, I just kept on thinking that we’d run out of flour for some reason, though I checked it just last night, for some reason I couldn’t get it out of my mind that it was all gone. I was just walking past the door to check it when you knocked—oh by the twelve nipples of Arixula, I’m chattering like a daft old ninny.”

Kylar opened his mouth, but a word wouldn’t fit in the cracks of the ex-prostitute’s rambling, edgewise or any other way.

“‘Time for a swift blow to the head, and a heave into the river, mistress,’ I tell her, and she just laughs at me. I do wish I were young, if only so I could see the look on your face like I used to get. Once these old sacks would make men stand up and take notice. You’d walk right into a wall because you couldn’t take your eyes off. It used to be that the sight of me in my night clothes—of course, I didn’t wear old lady’s rags like this, neither, but if I wore the kind of stuff I used to, I’m afraid I’d scare the children. It does make me miss the—”

“Is Momma K awake?”

“What? Oh, actually, I think so. She hasn’t been sleeping well, poor girl. Maybe a visit will do her good. Though I think it was a visit from that Durzo that’s got her knickers in such a bunch. It’s hard at her age, going from what she’s been to being like me. Almost fifty years old she is. It reminds me—”

Kylar edged past her and walked up the stairs. He wasn’t even sure the old woman noticed.

He knocked and waited. No response. A sliver of light peeked through the crack along the sill, though, so he opened the door.

Momma K sat with her back to him. Two candles burned almost to nubs provided the only illumination in the room. She barely stirred when Kylar came in. Finally, she turned slowly toward him. Her eyes were swollen and red as if she’d been up all night crying. Crying? Momma K?

“Momma K? Momma K, you look like hell.”

“You always did know just the thing to say to the ladies.”

Kylar stepped into the room and closed the door. It was then he noticed the mirrors. Momma K’s bedside mirror where she put on makeup, her hand mirror, even her full-length mirror, every one of them was smashed. Shards twinkled feebly from the floor in the candlelight.

“Momma K? What’s going on here?”