What had it been about? Kem glanced back, sharing a look, and Elen shrugged. Then he remembered he was mad at her and turned to face forward.

The carriages drove past fields, gardens, and outbuildings. The exterior of the Manor had the look of an old fortress, with high stone walls, palisade and wall walks, towers at each corner, and a reinforced entry gate. The great gates stood open. Simo halted the forward carriage before it. It was customary to wait for the genius to manifest before entering a Manor.

The air beneath the gates began to swirl and grow dark, as if a whirlpool of ash were being sucked through a crack from out of a land of grit and darkness and into the ordinary world. It coalesced into a funnel cloud: the genius of the Manor, a protective spirit called out of stone to guard the compound and its occupants.

A smoky voice spoke out of the ash-colored cloud. “Who seeks entry? What is your business?”

“I am Interlocutor Luviara. My respects to you, Ervis.”

“You know my name,” the genius rumbled as the cloud seethed, although Elen couldn’t tell if the seething was irritation or approval.

“As a theurgist, Honored Spirit, I know the name of every genius.”

The funnel cloud’s churning slowed with an emotion Elen, again, could not interpret, then returned to its restless swirl.

Luviara took the silence as her cue to go on. “His Exalted Highness Prince Gevulin seeks entry. His party will overnight at the Manor and go on their way in the morning. His business is his concern alone.”

“He and his party may pass.” The funnel spun apart as if an unfelt wind had torn it to pieces, and the ashy cloud streaked into the stones of the wall and vanished from sight.

Their party crossed under the wall in silence. A Manor was sentient in a way other buildings never could be. It wasn’t that the stones were aware; it was the genius bound to the Manor who was aware and ever-present.

Kem whispered, “Joef told me geniuses look like people. Why did that one look like a cloud of ash?”

Ipis said, a bit sourly, “Yeah, I don’t think your great good friend Joef knows everything he thinks he knows.”

Xilsi looked amused. “Some geniuses do appear in a human form. Just like that Sea Wolf who was executed out on the burning ground, who probably looked perfectly human but is aivur. Well, not just like. Spirits are the breath of the High Heavens, cast upon the lower world. Thus they don’t have physical form or physical substance. But they can appear pretty much however they want since their substance is … fluid. A genius can observe and hear pretty much anything going on anywhere in the Manor they inhabit, can’t they, Honored Ervis?”

A puff of ashy smoke popped in the air about the carriage.