Giddon was going to jump out of his own skin.

Every moment he spent neither talking to silbercows nor getting clear, hard answers to any of his questions was torture. Quona had returned before he and Hava were able to get into the locked room in her attic. They needed to know what Mikka and Brek had discovered in the north. But Quona never seemed to leave the house when they were home, and no matter how many parties or dinners they went to—no matter how much they hinted or nudged—no one seemed to have anything relevant to share.

The night of Sara Varana’s party in the Keep, it was impossible to step into the entrance hall and not look straight up at the glass dome above. Impossible not to admire it.

“Do you suppose that if all the lights were out,” Giddon said, “one could lie on the floor and watch the stars move across the sky?”

“Whatever,” Hava said. “There’s Arni Devret. I’m going to see what he knows about the north.” And she stumped off, leaving Giddon unaccountably grateful for her roughness, because it kept him from feeling too much. His star question had been the sort of thing he would’ve asked Bitterblue. He’d said it without thinking, and he’d broken his own heart with it.

From Arni, Hava learned that more than a dozen prominent Ledran families had property in the north and maybe half of them had houses on cliffs above the sea. Giddon learned from Periwinkle that Mikka and Brek had gone north on foot. It had been one of Mikka’s exploratory adventures.

“Mikka invited me to join them,” said Perry, beginning to tear up again. “Of course I declined. I went out with them often enough to know how it would be: no clear agenda; no concern about the existence—or lack—of inns; climbing and slipping and sliding and all manner of nonsense. Oh, how I miss that fool,” he said, mopping his face.

“Do you know where they went, exactly?” asked Giddon, tactfully handing him a handkerchief.

“I do not.”

“Do you know what sights they saw?”

“Probably every rock between here and Kamassar,” said Perry, blowing his nose.

Suppressing a sigh, Giddon moved off to talk to Quona as soon as he politely could, not because he wanted to talk to Quona, but because Quona was talking to the Estillan envoy, Cobal. Not that Giddon wanted to talk to Cobal either, but he knew he should be curious about what they discussed when they were together.

“A poodle!” exclaimed Quona as he joined them. “Hello, Giddon! Having fun?”

“So much fun. What’s a poodle?” asked Giddon, who didn’t know the Keepish word.