The Cavenda family was now living in the guest apartments at the top of a steep staircase in the Devret house, and the fox was too. He concealed himself under beds and inside walls. He collected tools for modifying grates and stored them in the Devrets’ heat ducts. You could be bonded to Quona too, his siblings had said to him that time, if you faked your own death, and then the house had caught fire. The fox had seen his chance. Not to bond to Quona Varana, though: to hide.

He’d made his “death” dramatic too, concealing himself in the trees and sending Ferla agonizing death throes. He’d pretended to be trapped in the kitchen, where the fire had found so many oils and the flames were blazing so furiously that he thought it would make for a tragic and convincing death scene.

What he’d never imagined was that Ferla would try to rescue him—and unfortunately, she’d set out in the direction that intersected with Lovisa and the queen’s escape. So the fox had run over Lovisa’s feet to warn her and he’d yelled up at the queen to keep still, then he’d hidden again, and waited. He hadn’t gotten to send Ferla the final gasp of his departing life, because Lovisa had clubbed Ferla on the head with a shovel and knocked her out.

But he’d done enough. When Ferla woke the next morning, headachy and sick, she assumed her fox was gone. She was bitter about it too. She believed herself to have lost a tool that might have helped to carry her through the rough times she guessed were coming.

For Lovisa was alive somewhere, hiding, and Ferla knew it. Benni did too. Benni, who’d searched the burning house for Lovisa, was sick now from smoke inhalation; and though he cried with relief when Ferla told him Lovisa had survived, he wasn’t happy not to know where she was. He needed her back. Especially since no human remains had been found in the ashes. The fire inspectors had made the assumption that the airship explosion—not to mention that other explosion Benni and Ferla were carefully not bringing to their attention—had been so destructive that Lovisa’s body had been obliterated. But the fire inspectors didn’t know about the queen. What if the queen had gotten away too?

The day after the fire, Monday, very late, Ferla crept down the stairs of the guest apartments, through the rest of the house, and outside, passing money to the Devrets’ guards at the door.

“I just want to stretch my legs,” she said to them. “No one needs to know.”