From the top of their table there came a burst of laughter. Jonas had apparently said something funny. Susan laughed without reservation, her head tilted back and her hands clasped before the sapphire pendant. Cordelia, who sat with the girl on her left and Jonas on her right, was also laughing. Thorin was absolutely convulsed, rocking back and forth in his chair, wiping his eyes with a napkin.

“Yon’s a lovely girl,” Renfrew said. He spoke almost reverently. Roland could not quite swear that a small sound—a womanly hmmpf, perhaps—had come from his other side. He glanced in that direction and saw sai Thorin still sporting with her soup. He looked back toward the head of the table.

“Is the Mayor her uncle, or perhaps her cousin?” Roland asked.

What happened next had a heightened clarity in his memory, as if someone had turned up all the colors and sounds of the world. The velvet swags behind Susan suddenly seemed a brighter red; the caw of laughter which came from Coral Thorin was the sound of a breaking branch. It was surely loud enough to make everyone in the vicinity stop their conversations and look at her, Roland thought... except only Renfrew and the two ranchers across the table did.

“Her uncle!” It was her first conversation of the evening. “Her uncle, that’s good. Eh, Rennie?”

Renfrew said nothing, only pushed his ale-cup away and finally began to eat his soup.

“I’m surprised at ye, young man, so I am. Ye may be from the In-World, but oh goodness, whoever tended to your education of the real world—the one outside of books ’n maps—stopped a mite short, I’d say. She’s his—” And then a word so thick with dialect that Roland had no idea what it was. Seefin, it sounded, or perhaps sheevin.

“I beg pardon?” He was smiling, but the smile felt cold and false on his mouth. There was a heaviness in his belly, as if the punch and the soup and the single beef-strip he had eaten for politeness’ sake had all lumped together in his stomach. Do you serve? he’d asked her, meaning did she serve at table. Mayhap she did serve, but likely she did it in a room rather more private than this. Suddenly he wanted to hear no more; had not the slightest interest in the meaning of the word the Mayor’s sister had used.

Another burst of laughter rocked the top of the table. Susan laughed with her head back, her cheeks glowing, her eyes sparkling. One strap of her dress had slipped down her arm, disclosing the tender hollow of her shoulder. As he watched, his heart full of fear and longing, she brushed it absently back into place with the palm of her hand.

“It means ‘quiet little woman,’” Renfrew said, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s an old term, not used much these days—”