But Ferla had a temper. It could burn low for hours. For days, even, heat snaking along her voice, glimmering in her eyes, slowly growing. Eventually, it would explode into a conflagration that could be felt all over the house. It was invariably one of her children who set it off, by being loud or asking one too many questions, by whining or crying, by interrupting her when she was with Benni. On those days, the punishments were different. She would close Lovisa in the room with a flint, a candle, and no food, taking the books and the lamp away, locking the door. “This is harder for me than it is for you,” she would say. “This is soft compared to what some parents do. When your uncle and I were children, our father would put us in a cave. It was cold and hard. Our only visitors were birds and our only view was the sun over the ocean as night fell. Do you understand, Lovisa? Do you understand that your life is soft?” She would shut the door, turn the lock, then not come back. When her anger burned itself out, she would send one of the guards to release the child. Lovisa would have to guess at how to ration the candle, not liking the darkness, but never knowing for sure how long her punishment would last. Sometimes it stretched well into the night. She’d learned to control a nervous bladder, and to hide food in her pockets all the time. She’d learned a lot of things.

Lovisa continued around the house. She noticed, with surprise, that no lights shone in the guest apartments on the third floor. Were the Monseans already asleep? It occurred to her that their presence in the house boded well for whichever boy had misbehaved. Ferla did not lose her temper in front of foreign delegations.

Atop the house, the Cavenda airship was tethered, a bulbous beast, dark against the falling snow. Lovisa doubted she’d be able to see it if she didn’t already know it was there. In daytime, the decorations of its balloon were visible: a purple, blue, and gold scene of silbercows swimming with the Keeper, as on the Keepish flag. Airships like this were Winterkeep’s pride. The technology was proprietary, no other Torlan nation had them, and Ta had been right when she’d said that Flag Hill was showing them off tonight. Her parents’ airship might be in darkness, but a number of the houses Lovisa had passed had lanterns glowing on their roofs, illuminating the most expensive possession a Keepish citizen could own.

Lovisa scaled the wall again, in the back of the yard where the rocks made it easiest on this side. Then she circled around to the front, where she went to the gate, rang the bell, and waited.

—