The handmaid hurried alongside Ryldia and helped her up. Together they left, leaving Taul to finish up with Savin.

“These contracts will force Lor’Toshtolin into competition with Lor’Baldir,” Savin said. “At least a fifth part of the pears for Vakayne.”

Taul nodded. Savin was not a house member, only a hired servant, and didn’t need to know the truth about the orchard. No one needed to know for now. He hoped Lor’Vamtrin would keep it quiet. Valley Mornae didn’t see the rivalries up close, nor the dangers of failure. Their battles were with nature. Toshtolin’s rivals within the crater were more elusive.

Taul searched the ledger for the almond harvest. The numbers declined ever so slightly, year after year. He’d need to visit the groves. There were simply not enough tenders capable of caring for so many ailing farms. Nervous energy fluttered through him like an unexpected sea storm rolling in. Was it unexpected, or had he simply ignored the signs? In Ryldia’s great-grandmother’s time, two tenders had managed Zeldra. Each generation added another tender with less success. It was not numbers, but quality that mattered. What could he do about that? A tender of his grandfather’s era was not like one of these times. The master leading the class decided who passed the guild trials. Voldin, his cohort’s master, had done things the old way. Taul grimaced at the memory of that dark night. He’d barely passed.

He tugged at the recently coiffed puff of silver on his chin. A vanity, he knew, but all the style amongst the influential Halkamas houses.

He just needed to get through Ryldia’s labor and the child’s confinement. Then his mind would clear, and he could figure out what to do about the orchard. This pregnancy must succeed, unlike Ryldia’s earlier attempt.

The image of blood, clots, and a tangle of flesh blotted out all other thoughts. He exhaled away the memory, turning back to the papers awaiting his signature. He sealed them with hot wax and pressed Lor’Toshtolin’s stamp to it.

As the wax hardened, the branches of the pear tree, Lor’Toshtolin’s sigil, broke in places. He blew on the wax, willing the branches to make the proper shape. Slowly, they solidified into a shape not unlike the twisted branches and roots of Zeldra.

Hours later, Taul stood, hands clasped behind his back, at the entrance to the apartment, awaiting Ryldia’s verdict. He’d done better this time, selecting an airier section of the estate. Lor’Toshtolin had expanded since the last pregnancy, absorbing a compound to the southeast. With a third more space and another villa, Taul had moved house members, servants, stores, everything necessary to make her place the best in all ways.

The facade would receive goddess-light and fill every chamber his consort would sit in or hallway she’d walk down. The private garden struggled, but little grew in the crater. Still, he beamed to see the shrubs budding through the slits of her matron’s council chamber. It would be the place she spent her time for the next ten years once the baby was born.

Confinement was a sacred time to the Mornae. He remembered his own still. One would think a boy wouldn’t remember given his purpose to a house. Boys found meaning in other houses, with their future consorts. Still, he remembered his matron mother’s care for him, her tenderness. Even when she’d not declared him yet. She called him imri, her second-boy, using an ancient term. This tenderness was an anomaly, uncommon for Mornae boys. He knew he was precious to his house. That was what stuck with him still. He wanted that for his consort, the joy, the love, even for a while before the responsibilities of growing up as a Mornae child took over.

“It’s perfect,” Ryldia said, walking through the chambers of the apartment. Layers of thin, silken cloth draped down from narrow shoulders, tenting over her swollen belly. It seemed to be almost a third of her, so slim she was, a reed.

They walked down a narrow hall to another chamber.

A new ironwood desk sat against the wall lined with thin window slits in the shape of the Fox. A comfortable chair shaped from silver-leaf pine sat beside it. Cushions of soft wool lined it, nothing too ostentatious. Ryldia was a wise matron, despite her youth, frugal but correct for their station above the vassals oathed to Lor’Toshtolin over the centuries. Each vassal had honored the matron with a gift for her apartment, each representative of their perceived value to the house.

It all boiled down to chits. Xura Lor’Toshtolin gave a gift worth three hundred silver, and Havice, a niece, gave one worth one hundred. How had they calculated the figure? Did it reflect the tax paid? In his youth, things were simpler. Or was it just how he remembered it?

In this era, things moved quickly. Old houses broke apart into two or three, and the increasing strata of oaths and vassals made it difficult to discern who was high or low. In the past, the quality of a Mornae spoke strongest in Hosmyr territory through the produce of their land. There was simply none better in Vaidolin. The quality of their vines and orchards, not the count of vassals beneath them or the acres they managed, defined houses. Hands in the soil, his grandfather had said.

Servants pattered about, placing the last of their mistress’s items in the room just so, just as she liked it. Her lashes lowered, waiting for them to finish. His heart fluttered, and he bounced on his heels.

The moment they were alone, she held out her hand to him. He drew close and embraced her, his hand on her belly, lacing his fingers with hers.

“This time will be different,” she said.

She glanced about, taking in each detail, a smile on her lips. He devoured her every twitch, every strand of hair wisping across her face. Goddess-light at the tip of a strand played across her cheek and he reached for it. She turned into his hand, and he cradled her cheek.

“Yes, it is all falling into place,” he said.

The news of Zeldra’s rot could wait until she was in confinement with the baby. There was nothing more important right now than making her comfortable.

Her eyes softened, and he kissed her.

She’d asked him if he thought it was too early to try for another child. He thought her strong enough, even though the first pregnancy had been difficult. His mother had lost her first, but then recovered and had a girl and two boys. He’d wracked his mind when she asked, thinking of all the similar cases he knew of. She’d accepted his answer, and he’d proven to be right.

“I’ll have the servants prepare a meal,” he said. “You look thin.”

She tried to protest, but he was already ringing the bell.

“I’ve never felt so good,” she said. Her sighs pleased him. He would do anything for her, everything for her.

“I’ve hired more spearmen to keep watch over the estate,” he said. “Toshtolin knights will watch over your villa.”

He’d ordered taller walls built around it and set diviners to the work of etching wards and glyphs into it. It was his duty to watch over the defenses, and she left him free to decide such things. She was a good matron, a good consort.

Not in a thousand cycles could she sour him.

Her handmaid appeared with a tray of delicacies inspected by his brother, Balniss. There was always the threat of poison. It worsened year after year. Such things happened in poorer houses, but also in the thick middle of Ilor’Hosmyr’s vassals. Even in Lor’Toshtolin, especially in Toshtolin, swelling with an ever-growing number of priestesses with bloodlines filling out beneath them, sometimes to the third generation. They may soon demand independence if Ryldia did not produce an heiress soon.

“I’ll ask Silla Lor’Vamtrin to visit you,” he said firmly, expecting her refusal.

Instead, she looked up at him, eyes closed, his hand pressed to her belly. “Valley priestesses have such a soothing way about them. Don’t you think?”

“As you say, matron.”

Emotion rushed through him.

“See that Savin corrects the errors,” she said. “Perhaps look them over yourself first.”

Her words stabbed him, reminding him the error had been his as well. Should he replace Savin? How would that help? He pulled at his collar. He must heal the rot and increase the number of contracts. Along with the heiress, these measures would cement Ryldia’s position. He could hire more spearmen, mercenaries only, but necessary to remind them all that the matron still had power over their lives in the most crucial way. A matron’s word was life and death within her house. A simple and stark reality, but it was what had held the Mornae together for fifteen cycles. That was how the ancients measured time, in thousands of years. His brother, Balniss, told him that the ancient sorcerers and priestesses entered a time of rest in every cycle to process and sift through all they had done and learned. Taul was barely two hundred, with so little accomplished. He would ensure she had that power at her command, even if for a brief time. He would do everything necessary to ensure she reigned as a matron. That is what a consort did. That he loved her, that he relished every moment with her, made it all the sweeter.

He watched her eat, placing each morsel delicately in her mouth. All the while cradling the heiress to come. He wondered if she spoke to the baby, already sharing her thoughts and wisdom with the girl.

Fear twinged his chest and throat as the lingering smell of the rot drew him back to the other pressing matter. The smell of it, though faint to the unpracticed, had been too strong, tainting the otherwise healthy aroma of bark, mulch, and fruit.

He ought to tell her. It was her orchard, but he could not ruin the moment. She’d bear the burden soon enough. Then, together, they would solve it, as it should be between a priestess and her consort.

7

Gishna stayed in bed that morning. Her limbs didn’t respond. She’d sent a servant to brew one of the seer’s teas, but the woman had vanished. Encased in pillows to prop her up, she waited patiently. A mouth and two ears. That’s what she was.

The only things that mattered these days were what she heard, what stirred in her mind—thankfully that was still functioning well—and the commands she issued. Her limbs were distant, unable to appreciate the softness of the sheets, the loveliness of the things set aside for her use. She didn’t even know what she looked like anymore.

A mouth and two ears. It did her no good to resent it. Time was her great enemy, and it was merciless to those who wasted time resenting it.

She’d sent for Maunyn and tried to listen for his strides down the marble hall, but the man moved like a shadow. Her pinhole gaze drifted to the slit windows and the lights of Halkamas flickered at her, teasing. In the distance, heavy clouds devoured the upper reaches of the Zalkamas’s black spires. She’d demanded this smaller room after waking one morning and panicking because she could not discern the walls or ceiling. Her own chamber was far too vast, reminding her of the high council chamber. She’d thought the void had come for her at last.

“You really must announce yourself, consort,” she rasped.

“As you say,” Maunyn said.

So silent he was. A thief, an assassin, and yet he taught none of these tricks to his students. He kept his power to himself. He dropped into the seat by her bed, his long legs spreading out.

She looked up to the domed ceiling, her gaze following a trail of starlight depicted in a mosaic.

“Things are not going as well as I had hoped,” she said. “We’ll need to be more aggressive. You will need to be more aggressive.”