Elen pressed a hand to her heart, the only reaction she could manage. The intensity of his gaze staggered her. Her legs felt numb.

She licked her lips once, twice, a third time, and finally choked out, “Your Exalted Highness.”

“So I am repeatedly reminded. Yet what does it all mean, I wonder.” He cast his gaze around the promontory, along the slopes, and up at the ridge, as if scouting his position. “I thought there would be more trees.”

How does this work? she wondered as her thoughts bolted into a wild gallop. Was the prince playing a deep game, or was this truly the haunt alight and alive behind the prince’s eyes? If it was the haunt, did he have access to the prince’s memories or was he walking as in dark night, trying to negotiate without being able to see a single landmark? What would happen if his retinue became suspicious? Yet had any of them, even Luviara, ever heard a tale of a Spire-haunt who steals bodies? Elen hadn’t, not until yesterday, because she’d never thought to ask and her predecessor had never mentioned it, if he’d even known. Therefore, why would such a possibility occur to these city-bred outsiders from the heartland? Furthermore, Luviara had admitted she’d never seen an intact Spire, so maybe she’d had no chance to stumble across any stories about haunts related to a full set of towers.

The wardens clustered behind the prince. They all wore similar expressions of bafflement and alarm. It confirmed Elen’s guess that this behavior was out of character for the man they served. Their confused hesitation gave her an opening to warn him, if indeed it was the haunt. If indeed it was not just the prince showing a more relaxed side of himself. But she found it difficult to imagine the Master of the Lyre and Preeminent Bard of the Twelve Cycles and the Three Hundred and Sixty Poems of the Glorious Founder ever relaxing so far as to address a provincial deputy courier.

She had to take this chance to confirm what she alone suspected. Only then could she decide how to proceed.

To speak to him directly would unleash all manner of trouble, so she turned to Luviara. Like the wardens, the theurgist was trying not to gape at the exalted prince.

Elen said, “Worthy Interlocutor, I speak to you as I am commanded to do. As a mere deputy courier, I am scarcely fit to address any imperial warden, much less the All-Seeing Eye of the Imperial Order of Wardens, an exalted Prince of the Third Estate who serves the Magnolia Emperor, His Blessed Elder Sister, as do all those fortunate enough to live in the Tranquil Empire which she rules. But I request, with humility, that you relay my words to the exalted prince, for his consideration.”