GOSSIP WAS THE CURRENCY of the idle wealthy, and Esor an Amen’s strange ways made staff talk. He was often seen pacing the hallways at Night by lantern and scribbling into journals. “He didn’t always do that,” Chisamith confided in Vaseri, one of Kit?anve’s many daughters. “It took...oh, a month, I think. Then he stopped spending Nights in his room. Don’t think he’s done it since. Stranger still, he isn’t spending Nights with anyone. There is no paramour. He just wanders.”

  “He’s restless when he visits the Houses in the city, too,” said Vaseri.

  “I’ve heard that he’s always that way. Restless. It’s like he’s looking for something,” said the housekeeper.

  Chisamith’s observations were carried to the Patrician’s wife. “What if he is looking for something?” Vaseri asked.

  “He should be careful what he looks to find here,” said Lady Kit?anve. She was writing letters at her desk. Her legs were tucked under her hindquarters, crossed at the ankles. The voluminous pearl robes were hitched to allow a cooling breeze up her thighs. “I’m suspicious of anyone so conspicuous.”

  “They say that if you meet him—share tea with him—he’s far too charming to be suspicious,” Vaseri said. “His clumsiness and naivete would consign him to being a joke if he weren’t so pretty.”

  “But he is very pretty,” said Lady Kit?anve, musing her glimpses of Corvin’s hand-picked tutor.

  “The eccentricities hardly end at Night. Chisamith said that one of her maids told her that Esor attends every festival and sabbat,” Vaseri said. “He asks after the planning committees.”

  “Volunteering for the Church’s festivals,” said Lady Kit?anve wonderingly.

  Interest piqued, she slipped a note to Chisamith.

  Within a matter of days, Lady Kit?anve found Commander Samej at her desk. When the Patrician’s wife demanded a kerotera’s free time, he could only surrender it. He settled himself on the kneeling stool across from hers. He set his gold-wrapped dagger on his thigh where Lady Kit?anve’s keroterase could see he would not touch it.

  “I wish to hear your impressions of Esor an Amen,” Kit?anve said. “I understand Great House Kovenor hired a restless creature of the Night who charms the nobility and seeks public service in idle times.”

  Samej detailed everything known about Esor an Amen:

  His family was locally famous in the Great Thicket. His parents’ trades, which had been passed from their own parents, made them wealthy.

  He was as respectable as Low could be, born manumitted and nary a mark upon his record.

  He was not very smart, but very earnest.

  “If Master Esor behaves strangely, it is the act of a thin-skinned lad suffering homesickness in a foreign county,” said Samej. “Strangeness is a sign the child should go home. He does not belong here.”

  “Corvin sought him personally, you say?”

  “Indeed, my lady,” said Samej.

  “What makes Esor a better teacher than those local to our si?e?”

  “There is surely a reason, but I am not held in the Lord Mayor’s confidence. He permits strange indulgences of Master Esor. Teacher and student may occupy the classroom when only one kerotera is present.”

  Lady Kit?anve clutched her necklace. “I can only imagine the motivation. To leave his sister so vulnerable to perversion...”

  “I watch Master Esor closely and would abide no harm. He presents little danger.”

  “I’ll take your evaluation into account, commander,” said Kit?anve.

  She commanded her housekeeper to arrange a luncheon with the entire teaching staff—Esor, Malenē, and àstin—as well as her daughters. The Lord Mayor and Samej may have judged Esor as harmless, but there was no judgment Kit?anve trusted more than her own.

  ~

  THE COOKS OF HOUSE írsa prepared a lavish meal under Lady Kit?anve’s guidance. She chose the finest samples of the four fish species least tainted by Chaos from the harbor. She selected herbs from her personal garden to season them. She authorized the use of citron bought from an Orkar trader. Chisamith decorated the dining hall with flowers, and the windows were cleaned so that the Light could make it all gleam.

  Her efforts to entertain such lowly company did not go unnoticed. Lady Malenē was precise in her compliments, as precise she was in her movements, taking the time to help serve the bucks before she herself settled.

  Esor was effusive in his praise, eager to avoid insult, and quick to blush. He made a salad bowl clatter loudly once and looked as though he might melt into the floor. He took two opportunities to visit the lavatory, and each time was so transparently an excuse to compose himself, Kit?anve pitied him for it.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Despite the distraction of Esor an Amen’s radiant awkwardness, Lady Kit?anve noticed àstin remained silent. He said nothing by the time they arrived at the second course.

  “What do you think of our company?” Lady Kit?anve asked her daughter, Ulana, seated to her left. “Do we not have a fine teaching staff at ?elasdur, my dear?”

  “Finer than they have in Rosen,” said Ulana.

  “Proof that a port can be wealthy in crowns and impoverished in people.” Lady Kit?anve stroked her hands over her belly, so large that it rested on her thighs when she sat. Her chair placed her high above those who kneeled around the table—all except her prided daughter seated to her right.

  With barely two centuries behind her, Vaseri was beautifully ripe. Masses of glossy chestnut hair were gathered in a snood. Her shoulders were bared, and she wore no crown, but that would surely change soon. Malor was Patrician and Kit?anve was Levusàlvar. Their daughter was only yet unmarried because they were waiting for the best offer.

  It meant something when young Lady Vaseri said, “The teaching staff at ?elasdur is indeed the finest. I’ve learned more at the hands of the instructors than I dreamed possible.”

  àstin bumped his goblet and it tipped, spilling onto Esor. àstin leaped to his feet. “Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry—Esor?”

  The younger teacher hadn’t reacted to the spill. He was unconscious in his chair, head hanging, bangs over his face, hands limp in his lap. He had been quiet for minutes but nobody had noticed.

  “What is the matter?” asked Kit?anve. Her guests were stirring, pushing their chairs away to stand. Alarm rippled over them.

  “He seems to be...asleep,” said àstin. He tipped Esor’s head back. The younger teacher was lightly snoring. àstin laughed and ruffled Esor’s hair with relief at the sound. “Oh, you sad little mouse of a buck.” He passionately planted a kiss on Esor’s forehead. To the rest of the room, àstin said, “Master Esor is an insomniac. Forgive him, my ladies, for this is neither insult nor illness. Come, Esor, you’d best wake up. Quickly now.”

  “No.” Lady Kit?anve stood. “Let him sleep.” She dismissed everyone from the room, including àstin an Galefar. “I will personally attend Master Esor.”

  ~

  ESOR JERKED AWAKE SOME time later, hand flying to grip the Heartbox. Lady Kit?anve’s dining room seemed flipped. He stared at the distant wall through his crooked legs as though he were floating above the windows.

  In his dreams, he had been gathering allies in a lightless cave, planning to defend the Dwarrow Mountainhomes. There were no windows looking outside in those caves; one cavern simply led to another. He had stood beside—within—above—Mishun Mikteshfis the Brinkdelver. The maps had been so detailed that Esor could read the words in the margins, but even those details were fleeting.

  It took time before Esor realized he had slipped from his stool during lunch. He remained on the floor, but Lady Kit?anve had propped his feet on a cushion.

  She stood over him, one hand on her belly and one on the back of a chair. “Awake at last,” said Lady Kit?anve.

  Esor nearly flipped himself over in his rush to simultaneously bow, apologize, and ask how long he had been unconscious. She passively watched him right himself. Esor only got to his knees before stopping with a groan, dizzy.

  There were no keroterase in the room. He was alone with the Patrician’s wife.

  “Someone seems to have slipped a sleeping draught into your meal. I’ll have to tell the cook to be more careful next time,” Kit?anve said dryly.

  “Please don’t,” said Esor. “This is no fault but my own. My dreams have been turbulent, so I resist sleeping. Childish tomfoolery.”

  “Tell me about the dreams,” Lady Kit?anve said.

  “They are unremarkable,” he demurred.

  “I am no Kovenor to debate orders with Low. Tell me about the dreams.”

  Her command clutched his chest like a fist. “I see dark caves and—and I see Dwarrow, largely.” Esor straightened himself as much as he could without getting up, smoothing back his hair, straightening his collar. “They feel like nightmares no matter the subject. When I wake, the details flee, and I am left with a wretched sense of dread and...”

  “And?”

  “I tremble for hours,” he said quietly, shamefully. “The Heralds here sing often of Dwarrow activity. Weak as I am, I cannot help but dwell upon the lives lost in village raids, and I fall asleep thinking of these battles. I suffer naught besides an over-active imagination.”

  “You are a fawn,” said Kit?anve. “So young, so small, so sensitive to the world, without a whit of vero. We become like the oldest trees, impervious to disaster, timeless observers on a changing land, but you are malleable as shoreline. My daughters, too, have strange visions when they sleep. They are sensitive to psychic matters. For years, I have collected their visions and tried to understand the connection, but theirs is a story with missing chapters.”

  She took the cushion that Esor’s feet had left. Her descent made her billowing robes gust out the citron-tinted scent of her sweat. Pregnant Lady Kit?anve was not so intimidating once seated, hands folded in her lap, face as round as her stomach.

  “?elasdur is a place of evil,” she said. “Truth of this evil is locked behind resolute lips and lost to time. Yet ?elasdur wants us to know what happened to him. ?elasdur’s story remains embedded in the soil. He speaks to us in dreams, begging us to find his wounds and heal them.”

  “You say the xilcadis lives?”

  “A world-tree’s petrified trunk can never truly die,” said Kit?anve. “His rotting halls yearn for growth. A skilled arborist to sing his veins to life. My daughters and I cannot help unless we find the missing pieces of ?elasdur’s story.”

  “If the chapters you seek play through my dreams, I can supply no more than a few phrases at a time,” Esor said. “They come and pass in a haze.”

  “Give me your hand,” Lady Kit?anve said. He hesitated. She seized his wrist and lifted the palm, tracing the lines with her fingernails. “You are sensitive indeed. I see great sickness in your past. Pain. You are a wound yourself, open and raw, not unlike ?elasdur.

  “I’ll provide a tincture that will help you sleep longer and recover more quickly after the visions. You’ll no longer faint during the Light. I want you to see the dreams.” Her fingers tightened around his wrist so he could not retract his hand. She studied him closer. “Ordinary enough, the lines which dictate body and mind,” said Kit?anve. “Everything else is frayed as lace. You are infinitely permeable. Have you been tested for Affinity?”

  “Yes, my lady,” said Esor. “I have none.”

  She nodded slowly, then loosed his wrist even slower, letting his fingers curl and slip from her grasp. Lady Kit?anve retrieved a jar of tea leaves from her banquette. “Each First Orote hereafter, you will share teatime with me.” She placed the jar in his hands. “Drink this before you sleep. Over time, your mind will settle and focus, and we will learn what ?elasdur is trying to tell us.”

  Prickling swept down Esor’s scalp to his spine. “Do you think it’s a warning?”

  Lady Kit?anve had a raspy, fleeting laugh. “?elasdur does not give warnings. He wants to be heard, but he does not care if we survive.”