She walked past the waiting hall, normally full at this hour but emptied by the imperial visit, and turned toward the main corridor. Typically, if the boys weren’t at school or engaged in chores or sports, she would find them in a back corner of Archives Hall, rifling through collections of architectural treatises or snort-giggling over illustrated sex manuals. Instead, they jumped up from a bench in the waiting hall and rushed over to her.

“We saw the prince!” Kem announced with the greatest excitement. “Did you see him?”

Elen grinned. “I did see quite a bit more of him than I expected, since I was with the intendant.”

“Did he speak?” asked Joef, all breathy amazement. “What sort of voice does he have?”

“One accustomed to commanding people to do his bidding.”

Kem snorted, used to her dry sarcasm.

Joef paid no attention as he loomed over her excitedly. “He wore the indigo of the wardens. He is really the prince-warden, the all-seeing eye?”

“So it seems, although he did not confirm the matter with me.”

Both boys gasped, deliciously scandalized by her disrespect toward an imperial scion. She tore the roll into halves and gave one to each lad. It was amazing how fast youths could inhale food.

“I’m being sent back out because of the Spore.” She easily identified Kem’s eye-flare of alarm. “But I’ll be back by Declaration Day. Kem, do you want to stay with Joef here, or at the cottage?”

“I’ll stay at the cottage,” he said stoutly. “Someone needs to harvest the quince and the last of the apples and greens. I’d rather have some time to myself.”

“Without me?” Joef demanded, face falling.

“You know where I live. I heard your aunt say you’ll be busy with your final archivist tests. All that writing, Joef. Nothing but writing. I know how you love sitting at the writing desk writing all afternoon while I’m out in the sunshine and air. You’ll never see sunshine and air again, I don’t suppose. Just ink and your hands getting white as maggots with each passing year from lack of sun.”

Joef gave a mock roar and took a swipe at Kem, and they crouched into a faked fistfight, like a battle on a stage. She recognized the pattern of moves from the popular play The Five Cunning Brigands Without Compare. Every traveling troupe of entertainers put it on at least once when they stopped over at a Halt. She and Aoving and toddler Kem had sneaked into Orledder during such a performance, with all attention rapt elsewhere, right before the messenger had come running in from Wormwood Moat, shouting about an irruption. People’s agonizing deaths had given her and Aoving a chance for a new life, and she hated that a part of her was horribly grateful for the chance. The viper stirred where it wrapped around her heart.