The intendant’s smile had a threatening softness and an iron gentility. “Lord Duenn, I will remind you that I am intendant and justiciar here. This is my jurisdiction, not yours. Any deputy courier assigned to my intendancy is thereby my responsibility. I will lock the accused into a holding cell in the sentinel wing until after—”

“I want the case heard right now. This instant!”

“It will have to be later,” said the intendant, not mentioning the prince or his imminent return.

Strange, Elen thought, that Lord Duenn did not ask about the imperial carriages that had passed him by earlier, on the road. On the other hand, he was a man much taken up with his mirror, seeing the world only in the ways it reflected his own concerns and importance. If a prince had passed through, then what did it matter to him? He was an incurious man, which gave Elen hope.

Duenn puffed and grunted, but the intendant’s argument was unassailable. “I see no way around your objections, although I agree under protest. But I’ll delegate a pair of my militiamen to stand guard over the prisoner.”

“You may accompany us to the cellblock, if you wish,” said the intendant graciously. Not by a hair did he reveal he had gotten his way, but Elen knew him. He was grim, certainly, but he was also withholding judgment about the accusation. It was all she could ask for.

The intendant gave orders to his sentinels to escort Elen to the cellblock. Lord Duenn insisted on going as well, with two of his militiamen in attendance, one wearing a captain’s badge and the other the man who had lost his gloves to Elen in a long-ago card game. She didn’t recall the game or the gloves. Probably she had traded them for something she needed more.

A large party therefore accompanied her to the rear of the Residence and past the stables to a windowless blockhouse. Its heavy door let into a gated entry where the guards stood watch. Beyond an inner gate ran a single, dead-end corridor with five barred cells on each side. The interior stank of mildew and urine. The cells closest to the door usually held drunks and petty thieves, but it was traditional for the intendant to grant an amnesty on the eve of Declaration Week, so the place was empty.