“Furthermore!” The word was the snap of a whip, cutting off Simo. “If my adversary’s agents happen upon her, they will kill her. What manner of imperial shield am I, if I carelessly and uncaringly allow those who have assisted me to be tossed aside into the path of knives? Is this what you desire, Simo? That instead of protecting the people who serve me, I dishonorably discard them?”

“The fault is mine, Your Highness.” Simo dropped to his knees and hid his face behind his hands. The other wardens followed. Elen knelt too, stunned by the unspooling sense that the force of his anger, the explosion of his temper, was tied to something she feared to think too closely about.

Yet she could not help but wonder. Did he genuinely care about her?

He surveyed the plaza and the kneeling people, all of them, even the Manor-born, for all were his servants because all were servants of the palace, of the empire, and he the only person in this place whose body had been born into the imperial lineage within the Flower Court.

“Enough of this! Have I not made my wishes clear to all of you?”

Berel’s attendants cowered, trembling. The taut silence stretched out. Drifting on the air came the unexceptional sounds of life in the Halt beyond the Residency’s wall: wheels on stone, a shrill whistle, water splashing as it was poured, the hustle and bustle of a community closing down their day’s activities and making ready for the night. The wall that separated the rest of the Halt from the Residency was the barrier of custom and privilege that separated anyone not palace-born, or in service within the palace, from the emperor. The locals had no reason to enter the Residency except the day they Declared a profession, or if they were required to stand before the justiciary. Every person’s birth token and death token resided in the census hall of each intendancy, the scant record of a life.

All but El, who existed nowhere that anyone could find, because she had no birth token. Elen the courier might have left her mark in the many transmission logs of her monthly courier routes. But when El died, she would, like a butterfly, vanish forever from the memory of the world. Maybe she already had, since Kem did not know El, only Aunt Elen. Now that Ao was gone, only the haunt knew that name.

The haunt did not look at her again. Perhaps he had realized his mistake, that people would wonder why an exalted prince had leaped to retain a deputy courier and made so many excuses for doing so when he need only demand to be obeyed.

Raising a hand, he said, in a more princely drawl, “Intendant, my bath!”