Þetta reddast (phr.) "everything will work out in the end".

That day had started much like any other; she had risen with the sun, and been dressed by her maids in a lilac gown, smiling with them as they chattered about the latest gossip in the kitchens and in the servants' quarters, which was a world within itself. Abishag Txori, one of the parlour maids, was with child, and the whole place was all agog about the father's identity. More than that: there was a narrow set of contenders in play, and everyone had their favourite. Suggestions were traded and bartered as her stays were tightened and tied; arguments were started and stifled as her layered skirts were arranged out in a broad fan to test that they would hide whatever shoes she chose to ruin later in the day. Sanamaria Albescu, who had laced her in her very first boned corset at eleven years old, was the only one brave enough to ask her opinion, bristling with awareness that their lady had been party to every word spoken, every breath breathed.

Asenath Schreave smiled, taking a long sip of salep – her usual morning beverage, a rich, hot drink of hot milk, sugar, wild orchids and foxglove. "I don't think it should matter, as long as Miss Abishag is happy."

"Delighted," Sanamaria replied – thirty-one years old, from Gjöll District, favourite colour viridian. She was smoothing out the gilded blankets which lay heavy on the four-poster and plumping the duck-down pillows at the head of the bed. It was a familiar ritual, comforting and reassuring in the ease and speed with which everyone in the room accomplished their tasks. "If she has a girl, she plans to name her Asenath – with your blessing, of course."

Asenath inclined her head slightly, as though hiding the smile that had now broadened with delight at this news. Some of the younger girls were working on her hair now; she usually wore it loose around her shoulders, but today they were carefully binding up segments of her hair into a half-twist. She kept a critical eye on their progress, but found herself content with the resultant silhouette – it was elegant. So many new stylists thought they could ape her style merely by making it look carefree, to a degree of carelessness, but those kinds of servants did not last long in Asenath's service. She had a duty to serve the people; she owed it to them to show up looking presentable, like any other worker would. "And a boy?"

"Davit. For her father."

"That's a beautiful name." Asenath stood, inspecting her hair and her dress, and offering the assembled maids a smile and many thanks when she found them to be as perfect as they ever were. They answered her with perfect curtesies. Despite last night's lack of sleep, she was pleased to find that she looked relatively well-rested; Jordana Cvetkovska – sixteen years old, Arali District, two older brothers – was quick to step in and brush a little powder over the princess' nose and cheekbones to hide whatever hints of tiredness might linger. Those were good instincts; she had read the moment well. Asenath made a mental note of that, even as she continued to address Sanamaria: "well, all good wishes to Miss Abishag and to her child."

Sanamaria smiled. "I will pass them along."

They filed out, as they always did. Once Asenath was fully dressed and beautously prepared, the maids would disperse to the rest of their tasks and leave their lady alone in her bedroom to draw up her skirts and slide a dagger into the sheath worn strapped around her right thigh. It was an elegant decoration, sufficiently so to deter any questions about the matter – it was intricately carved with symbols of twining vines and long, sharpened feathers, a piece of jewellery in its own right. The sheath matched the dagger's hilt perfectly; Asenath was nothing if not co-ordinated in all that she did.

Once thus attired – perfectly attired – Asenath finished her salep and left her cup balanced carefully on the edge of the mantel for Sanamaria and her team to collect when they returned to light a fire. Attiring herself with a pair of ivory-lace slippers, Asenath departed her bedroom. In her drawing room, a small stack of letters had been left on her desk for attention later in the day; Asenath parsed them briefly, to check if anything required her urgent attention. To her mild dismay, there was little from the outer districts – no missives from the outer ring, where the people tended to struggle a little more. These were mostly messages from Ganzir and Gjöll, written in an impressively illegible hand and sealed with intricate wax seals typical of the aristocratic families. They could wait. Asenath tucked only one into her hand – an appeal for clemency – as there was a gentle knock on her door.

Akanksha Txori curtsied deeply as the door was pulled open – twenty-five years old, bearing the same name as the district from which she hailed, mildly allergic to tree nuts. "Your Serene Highness."

"Miss Akanksha. To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Your father bids you dine with him."

Asenath smiled. "I would be delighted. Thank you, Miss Akanksha." She paused, lingering on the threshold of her doorway. On either side of the entrance, men in grey coats stood ramrod straight, staring straight ahead at the stone walls of the corridor as though Asenath and Akanksha were not there at all. "Gentlemen, please do take a reprieve, won't you?" She paused. "Björn, you've been here since dinner last night."

"Our relief was called away, your Serene Highness."

"And is there relief for the relief?"

Björn – twenty-three, Kelch, left-handed – looked inclined to smile. "We'll make sure to be gone before you return from breakfast, ma'am."

"Good. I don't want to see either of you for the rest of the day. You need your rest." Asenath kept her voice sweet. "Of course, I'll miss having such handsome men around…"

Akanksha said, wryly, but without overstepping her position, "I'll pick some good-looking replacements for you, ma'am." She was good at that, but then, she had a lot of practice in that role – as the hierarchy in Ganzir went, Akanksha Txori was closer to the top than her diminutive stature and soft eyes would ever suggest. "Have you a preference for breaking your fast?"

"Whatever Chef Vatroslav fancies." Asenath gave the palace guards a delicate smile. "Until tomorrow, then, gentlemen."

"Good day, ma'am."

Asenath's chambers were deep in the bowels of palace, grafted onto the whole court's buzzing nervous system. Her room didn't admit much light – her windows looked backwards onto the courtyards around the stables, rather than out onto Priscus' gardens, as most of the royals favoured – but Asenath didn't mind that unduly. It did mean, however, that she had to ascend a number of stairs to her father's preferred breakfasting room, affectionately referred to as the Blue Closet. It was a smaller room than those in which the family usually had dinner; in fact, his favoured table was a small square one with barely enough space for four chairs around it, so that the family often bumped elbows as they ate. The wallpaper was a pale sky blue, fretted with phoenixes and grapes, in a design the Chous had favoured for their porcelain for many years.

True to Akanksha's suggestion, Aviram was already present and perusing one of his newspapers – no doubt the first off the press in Kass that morning. Asenath wouldn't have been surprised to find that the ink was still slightly damp on the page. Her father always believed it imperative to hear the views of the populace as promptly as possible. His salt-and-pepper hair was slightly tousled, though he was dressed impeccably in a velvet emerald waistcoat with druj-bone buttons. His knuckles were dusted lightly with charcoal; it didn't take Asenath long to identify the culprit. A recent sketch, Kasimira Schreave caught unsmiling in half-profile with her hair around her shoulders, rested against the eastern wall, which was otherwise dominated with an official oil painting of the same woman, resplendent in ermine and gold.

Asenath's slippered feet sank deeply into the woven rugs which papered the floorboards of the Blue Closet. She gave a shallow curtesy, one hand holding her skirts. "Good morning, papa, did you sleep well?"

He rose as he noticed her entrance; they exchanged kisses on the cheek. "Middling, unfortunately, Sena. And you?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Hmm. Yes, you're looking well." He was distracted. Asenath didn't take it personally. He had important matters on the mind. A great weight on his shoulders.

They settled back at the table; Aviram rang a silver bell to summon the attendants, who appeared with plates laden with fruit, as Asenath preferred on the rare occasions she could be tempted to breakfast. Aviram took a long sip of his agua dulce, and then, without looking up from his newspaper, said, "you have something for me."

"Something to ask of you."

He glanced up, eyebrow raised. Asenath took that as her cue to speak.

"A petition for clemency. This young fellow in Miecz – he abandoned his post during the fall of Mønt and the paqūdus propose to hang him for it."

"Hmm. An example should be made of such cowards, Sena. Serving in the army is a privilege and duty – not a matter to be picked up and discarded on a whim. We do not press anyone into service, do not conscript or draft. These people make voluntary oaths, and such discipline is merely deterrence against oathbreaking."

Asenath's voice was soft and firm. "When has the prospect of death ever deterred the desperate, papa?"

Her father was amused. "How would you commute?"

"The contrite man serves justice better than a corpse," Asenath replied. "He left the people of Mønt to the druj; perhaps assign him to the reclaimation corps, or to relief efforts. Let him make it up to those he abandoned."

"And if he runs again?"

There was no one else in the room. Asenath said, softly, "leave him to my druj."

Aviram smiled, and dropped his eyes back down to his paper. "Sly as ever, princess." He nodded. "Leave the letter. I'll sign the order tonight."

"Papa."

"This afternoon." He smiled. "Now, shall we dine as father and daughter or do you have more wisdom to dispense to your king?"

"None for now." Asenath returned the smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Spearing a piece of mango, she admired its bright yellow colour and the veins running through it as she added, "where is Silas?"

"Out with your mother." This pronouncement was proven wrong immediately, as though scripted, when the door slid open anew and the queen entered the room, pausing on the threshold to offer her husband a brief curtesy that he immediately waved away. Queen Kasimira was dressed in a rich dark red accented subtly with a more sunny gold; her fitted bodice and sleeves was devoid of the delicate embroidery which so distinguished her daughter's preferred garments, while her pants were loose around her legs to allow for ease of movement. She was unornamented; one would have easily mistaken her for a guard who was particularly casually attired. Her hair was coiled into a bun, which bared the long scars marking her shoulders. "Or not." Aviram seemed unflustered to be so quickly disproved. "Good morning, Mira."

The queen murmured a greeting to her husband, bending at the waist to kiss him gently. Asenath averted her eyes demurely. Marital bliss, she thought – it was almost enough to settle her stomach about the upcoming Selection, the idea that Silas would be married by the end of the year. Leaving her Silas' happiness to chance? The assumption that one of these two-dozen girls would be good enough? Hmm, her father might have said. Not if Asenath had anything to say about it.

"Your brother is in the aerie," Aviram corrected himself, "building a new orrery."

Asenath raised an eyebrow. From a young age, she had been half-a-mother – more a parent to Silas than a peer. It had the strange effect of making her seem more equal to Kasimira, such that the two women looked on one another as allies in the court of Schreaves rather than showing a more typical filial bond. "What was wrong with the last one?"

Before Aviram could answer, Kasimira said, bluntly, "Oroitz is waiting." She was a woman of few words; Asenath was rather surprised that she had said this much, rather than simply saying Oroitz as explanation in itself.

"Oroitz can wait," Asenath said, her thoughts caught on the idea of Silas alone again. "He's very good at it."

"Tch." Aviram shook his head as he folded up his newspaper and set it to the side. "You're cruel to that boy."

"Not at all," Asenath said, laughing, shaking her head. This wasn't what cruelty looked like.

He was, indeed, good at waiting. She left it to him for another hour before she went to see him.

As Asenath stepped into the chapel, she caught sight of him immediately, though she imagined there were few in the world who would have. He was sitting in the pew farthest from the door, tucked into the corner of the alcove whichjutted out from the altar; he had shucked his distinctive red coat in favour of a black vest that bared his scarred arms. Thick dark brows were knitted over narrow eyes, set deeply in a pale, handsome face. His hands were knotted before him, his arms resting on his legs. The morning light, filtered through the stained glass windows which dotted the enormous stone walls, painted moving slashes of red and green across his face.

"Long night?" Her footsteps were soft upon the tiles; each of the paving stones were inscribed with the symbols of the tarot, the art abstract and elegant. He didn't look up at her – he was a stubborn sort – but only observed his hands closely, his jaw clenched tightly as though a cold wind was cutting through him. Nor did he answer. Asenath didn't have to press him – she could read it on him, as easily as reading one of the letters heaped upon her writing desk – but press him she did. "Oroitz."

She eschewed use of his surname when she could; it wasn't as though it meant much. Txori was the appellation attached to any of the foundlings or orphans within the walls of that particular district; more than a dozen of them worked in the palace, no more a sibling or cousin to each other than they were to Asenath and Silas. Oroitz had adopted the name a little later in life than most – no doubt, he didn't know that Asenath knew this – and there were, etched in his features and his demeanour, some small hint of his origins for those who cared to search for them. There was a reason Asenath had selected him for particular attention, after all.

"Mag Mell still stands." His voice was deep, husky. People were often surprised by that voice. He seemed too young, too thin, too handsome, to command the status that he did – watcher, second-class. Practically a commander at only twenty four years old. "After," he said, "a long night."

"That's very good news." She took her seat in the same row as him, but turned her body so that she sat perpendicular to the watcher. It gave her the faint impression of authority, like she was about to solicit a confession from him, or perhaps like he was about to pray to her. "You don't seem happy about it."

"As I said." Oroitz had that in common with her mother – a certain clippedness to his words, a reluctance to speak for longer than he had to. Laconic, Priscus might have said, apothegmatic. "A long night."

"What news?"

"The western corps – all but annihilated."

"All but?"

"Suero is doling out new crests to the survivors. Third class."

"Anyone I've heard of?"

"Minor excubitors." He shook his head. "Hijikata's pets."

Disappointing. Asenath always loved a little bit of gossip about the lower tiers of the tagma, but Kane Hijikata had never really managed to keep her attention the way that some of the other commanders did. Nonetheless, to hear that his unit had been decimated – well, Asenath's little brother was about to inherit this kingdom and all who dwelled within it. It was a sorrow that this might make things more difficult for him, or weaken the defences available to the palace. But this might, she supposed, distract him from the tunnels for the time being – that wasn't unhelpful.

"What do you have for me, then?"

Oroitz shook his head. The words ground out from him, reluctant, bitten off at the edges: "Hijikata doesn't leave much behind him. Suero himself would have struggle."

The temperature in the chapel seemed to have dropped a degree or two. The stained glass over them, rippling with varying shades of red, depicted an ancient battle between the Kur Empire and those who had most cravenly betrayed it. It was a strange, stretched art-style, depicting xrafstars frozen in motion without quite making clear what that motion was intended to represent. The light oozed slowly from the glass, spilling across Oroitz's hair and staining it darker, blood-dark. Asenath said, slowly, "what about my flying druj?"

Silence.

Asenath smiled. It was not an expression with any warmth in it; it was not an expression that she had reason to use often. "This is twice you've let me down, Oroitz."

"Twice." It was an agreement; Asenath was not easy to disagree with. He kept his eyes turned onto his hands. It was hard to tell – even for Asenath – if he was avoiding her eyes or if he was simply too tired to be properly intimidated. "I suppose so."

"Don't let it happen a third time."

Asenath was not looking at Oroitz; she was looking at the stained glass mural on the other side of the alcove, resplendent in blue and green, depicting the Fall of Siarka which had featured so heavily in so many of Priscus' bedtime stories to her as a child. Siarka had been a holy land in the old world, and its fall had been one of the most decisive battles ever staged by the Empire of Kur – its xrafstars had stained sky and soil with dark magic, had torn the whole of the horizon asunder.

A pity the xrafstars no longer existed, Asenath had mused as a younger woman, worshipping at the chapel to celebrate Fall Day – a pity. She would have liked to dissect them, figure out precisely how black magic grafted onto flesh, confirm her theory about their being in some part druj, or druj being in some part xrafstar… it was a theory that Asenath suspected she could not fully dismiss until she had a heart in her hands and blood under her nails.

"I won't," Oroitz said softly. His voice was rough. It sounded like a promise – an oath. Asenath found herself rethinking her early pronouncements about oathbreakers. "I won't let it happen again. I'll be sure of it."

Asenath smiled warmly. The alcove abruptly seemed warmer, brighter, less sinister – her smile could have converted any grimy family chapel into the largest and most opulent of cathedrals. Oroitz was a smart boy, to keep his gaze averted so. "Then I don't think we'll have a problem."