“It’s funny,” he said, in a tone that meant it wasn’t funny. “You speak like an Orledder local now. From your way of talking, no one would ever know you didn’t grow up here. But Midwife Aoving never lost her northern accent. I also remember Archivist Heyadi once remarking it wasn’t quite a Woodfall accent. She has an ear for such nuances. At the time, you said you came originally from sparsely settled hill country. A region with no Manor.”

“That’s right.” She’d rehearsed the telling of this version of her childhood so many times that it rose to her lips as if it were the truth. “It was so isolated, I don’t remember ever hearing news of the empire. Children like us knew nothing of what lay beyond the next hill.”

“A careful way of not telling me anything useful about where you came from originally, is it not? Vague generalities are like spring water, easy to drink but cold.”

She couldn’t bear for him to think ill of her. Most of the people in her life she liked, or disliked, against a backdrop of indifference. Ties must be severable at a moment’s notice. Sentiment shackled you, so it was better never to bind oneself. Yet people sought affection because it was like air and water: necessary for life. She knew better than to trust, yet sometimes her heart pulled her into those chains.

“Intendant … Uncle, if I may call you so … I do not know the name of the place where she and I lived as children. We left there very young to escape being killed by Spore.” This, at least, was partially true. “We were grateful to find a place in Duenn Manor, where we could live behind a moat and walls. Eat every day. Gain skills that would make us useful and help us survive.”

“Manors rarely take in outsiders.”

“So we learned later on. There’d been a terrible sickness in the province. A pale crust, like the rime of salt ponds, would form on people’s tongues and close up their throats. No one knew if it was a new disease or a new form of Spore. They had lost so many people that the Manor was eager to take in outsiders to fill out their work force.”

“Ah. Yes. The White Tongue Plague hit Woodfall and Manywaters Provinces particularly hard. That was the last reign year of the Lily Emperor. The plague was said to herald his death, a sign from the High Heavens that he, too, would waste away, that his time was closing like a gate. It was the same year I came to Orledder Intendancy.”