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It was a rare treat to see Foley at a loss, and she pressed the advantage. “Let’s imagine a tall girl with blond hair and a quiet manner. Is that the kind of woman you would like?”

“You’ve just described Josetta.”

She laughed. “I know. But would you?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“So, not elay,” Corene pursued. “I don’t see you with a torz girl. Too much like you. Then your life would be
really
boring.”

“Thanks,” he said sarcastically.

“Maybe a hunti wife? She’d like you because you’d always stand firm and provide support when she needed it. Though, again, that marriage might be a little dull.”

She could tell by his expression he could see where this conversation was going and didn’t like it. So he tried to outmaneuver her. “I’d have to go with coru, I suppose. All the girls I’ve ever liked have been women of blood and water. Endlessly changing and endlessly fascinating.”

She made her face limpid with innocence. “But you never wanted to stay with any of those girls, did you?” she said sweetly. “Obviously, you need to take a sweela lover.”

But he was ready for her. “Sweela girls only play at love—that’s what everybody says,” he answered. “Not a good match for a torz man. He’d give her his whole heart and she’d just break it and toss it aside.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Corene said indignantly. “Not if she was the
right
sweela girl.”

“Oh, of course. The sweela girl who lives in the little house and raises a garden and leads a simple life,” he responded. “Who doesn’t
miss the excitement of court and the attention of the titled lords who come to visit.
That
sweela girl?”

Corene hunched her shoulders. “You make me sound very shallow.”

He affected surprise. “I didn’t realize we were talking about you.”

“Well, we started out by talking in generalities, but then you got specific,” she said with great dignity.

Now Foley grinned. “I don’t think it does us any good to try to come up with a description of my ideal wife,” he said. “Either I’ll meet her or I won’t, and I’ll realize it’s her or I won’t. Either way, I think my life will be pretty good.”

“But don’t you want that?” she asked, and even she could hear the wistfulness in her voice. “Love? Someone who waits for you at the door, someone whose day isn’t complete unless she sees your face? Someone who will love you even when you’re angry, even when you’re ugly, even when you don’t love yourself? Doesn’t everybody want that?”

He was silent so long that she felt a skip in her heartbeat. His face was still shuttered, but she thought his eyes looked sad. “Is that what you think you’ll find in your own marriage to some royal heir?” he asked softly.

She hunched her shoulders again, protectively this time, as if bracing for a blow. “No, of course not,” she said, trying to sound matter of fact. “I was talking about ordinary girls. The kind I’m never going to be, remember?”

He watched her a moment. “You’ll never be ordinary,” he said at last. “But everyone deserves that kind of love.”

“But you won’t go looking for it and I can’t be expected to find it,” she said, managing a wisp of laughter.

“Maybe you’ll be surprised,” he said. “I hope so.”

“Maybe you will be, too,” she said.

He nodded and came to his feet. “I’ve had a lot of other surprises,” he said, heading for the door. “So maybe.”

She stood up and followed him so she could lock up behind him. “I’ve had surprises, too,” she agreed, “but most of them weren’t that nice.”

He put a hand on the door, hesitated, then turned back to her. “One thing—” he began, and then abruptly shut up.

She stepped closer, feeling strangely breathless. “What? ‘One thing’ what?”

He made a slight, controlled gesture. “If you do marry some prince. And if he isn’t what you expect. What you hope. If he’s worse than that, if he’s
awful
. You can let me know. It doesn’t matter where you’re living, what country you’re in. Send word to me and I’ll come for you. I’ll get you out of there, I’ll get you home. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

As if her heart suddenly pumped out molten blood, she felt heat spread from her chest through every part of her body. Her toes and fingers tingled and she knew her face flushed red. But she smiled at him. “That’s good to know,” she said softly. “You can bet I’ll take you up on your offer if I have to! No matter where I am and who I’ve taken for a husband. I’ll know I won’t have to stay. I’ll know I can count on you.”

“Always,” he said.

“There haven’t been too many other people I could always count on.”

“There haven’t been too many other people I’ve made promises to.”

“Then I’m even more grateful.”

There was more to say—there had to be, though Corene couldn’t think of a single word—and anyway, Foley didn’t stick around to hear what she might come up with when she finally organized her thoughts. He just nodded once, very businesslike, and stepped into the hall, closing the door firmly behind him. She was left staring at the place he had been standing, feeling her blood still burning like liquor in her veins, and wondering what it might be like to someday be rescued by Foley.

FIFTEEN

S
ince the air at the palace was suffocating, Corene spent part of every day outside in some excursion: shopping at the Great Market for accessories to wear to the masked gala, for instance, or visiting the small Welchin temple in the Little Islands that Leah had told her about. She never went alone, of course. Foley was always at her side, though he managed to be taciturn enough that she couldn’t find an opportunity for another one of those deliciously unnerving conversations about the kinds of people they might marry.

He wasn’t her only attendant. Malinquese guards inevitably escorted her, and the other women usually accompanied her as well. Occasionally Steff came along, and even Jiramondi joined them for the expedition to the temple.

Jiramondi had been right when he predicted that neither Melissande nor Alette would be disturbed to learn they were hostages in Malinqua. At any rate, neither of them seemed to blame him for their circumstances. Despite her best efforts, Corene also found it difficult to hate him, though she couldn’t resist taking little digs at him whenever an opportunity presented itself. For instance, she scoffed out loud when he drew blessings at the temple and they turned out to be patience, honor, and triumph.

“
One
of those at least doesn’t apply to you,” she said with a sniff, but he merely smiled and tossed the coins back into the barrel.

She found her own blessings even more unnerving: courage, courage, and courage. She threw them all back before anyone could ask her to decipher them.

They had all been glad, upon returning from the temple outing, to find that Liramelli and Greggorio were back from their travels. However, their presence at the dinner table didn’t do much to dispel the gloom that had shrouded the dining hall in recent days. Greggorio looked drawn and haunted, as if he hadn’t bothered to eat much for the past nineday, and when he did, his meals were attended by ghosts. He had taken a seat beside Alette at the half-empty table and the two of them held a brief, low-voiced conversation that everyone else pretended they were not trying to overhear. Corene couldn’t answer for anyone else in the room, but she couldn’t catch a word.

Liramelli looked less haunted but equally sad, and barely bothered to answer Jiramondi’s kind attempts at conversation. Neither Garameno nor Filomara was present, and Corene suspected that meant they were taking their evening meal together in the empress’s private quarters, hatching some new plot. Even so, it was hard to be sorry they were missing.

“Come to my room after the meal—I have some things to show you,” Corene invited Liramelli as they all rose from the table. She nodded at Steff, Melissande, and Alette, and the other three followed her from the dining room.

Foley stayed in the hallway as the five of them entered Corene’s suite. “I’ve been shopping,” she said to Liramelli as she shut the door. “I’ve bought such pretty things for you!”

Steff appeared horrified. “You’re not going to sit here and talk about
clothes
all night, are you?” he demanded.

“Maybe, and maybe we shall talk about other exciting things, too, but you will not be in the room to hear because you are a silly boy who is afraid of fashion,” Melissande said.

“I’m not afraid of it, it’s
boring
!” he exclaimed. “I thought we’d play penta or talk about something that
mattered
.”

Liramelli offered an exhausted smile. “Maybe I can see the pretty things tomorrow,” she suggested. “When I can appreciate them more.”

Melissande drew Liramelli down next to her on one of the sofas, while the other three settled in chairs nearby. “Do you want to tell us about your journey?” Melissande asked. “Or will that only make you more sad?”

A slight shudder shook Liramelli’s shoulders; weariness made her pale, plain face even paler and plainer. “Greggorio scarcely spoke the whole time we were in the carriage,” she said. “I started babbling, just to fill the silence, just to distract him, because he seemed to be in so much pain. And we’d been traveling for about two hours when he suddenly said, ‘I thought she left me. I was angry with her. I almost hated her. And all this time—’ And then he started crying.” She shook her head. “It was horrible. I hugged him and tried to say nice things, but what kinds of things can you say that will do any good?”

“None, but of course you have to
try
,” said Melissande.

“Then at her parents’ house it was even worse. Everyone in mourning, everyone blaming themselves for not realizing that Sarona hadn’t just run away.”

“See, that’s the part I don’t understand,” Corene said, frowning. “Where did everybody think Sarona would
go
? If she’d run away from Greggorio, wouldn’t she have sent a note to her parents? If she’d run away from her parents, wouldn’t she have gotten in touch with Greggorio? If her parents thought Filomara had shipped her off somewhere, wouldn’t they have come to Palminera and caused a commotion?
Somebody
should have known where she was.”

“That’s the saddest part of all,” Liramelli agreed. “Everyone believed she had left
them
. They assumed she
had
told someone else—someone she actually cared about.”

“Thus we see very plainly the perils of being a woman with no true friends,” Melissande pronounced. When Liramelli made a faint protest, Melissande shook her head. “You cannot pretend she was a nice person just because she is now dead. Everyone has said she was vain and manipulative—which Greggorio never realized, but then we all know he is a stupid man—and her murderer took advantage of that fact. He gambled that everyone would assume Sarona had confided in someone
else
. And he was right. Or she, of course.”

“Well, let me say right now that I don’t plan on running off without
a word to anybody,” Steff said. “So if I vanish in the middle of the night, come looking for my body.”

“Steff!”
Liramelli exclaimed.

Melissande was nodding. “I do think there are people at court who would like to see you dead,” she said to him. “You cannot be too careful.”

“The last time I ran away, I left a note,” Corene said. “So I’m with Steff. I’ll let you know if I’m planning to disappear. And I’ll take Foley with me.”

Alette spoke up in her smoky voice. “I would happily leave without a word if I thought I could get safely out,” she said. “But if I thought any of you would worry, I would try to let someone know before I slipped away.”

“Please do,” Corene said. “Or leave a clue behind. A secret message.”

“Yes! A code that only the five of us know!” Melissande cried. She pointed at Alette, who, as usual, was wearing her yellow shawl. “Leave that tied in a knot in the middle of your bed.”

Alette pulled the edges closer to her heart. “Oh no. This is the one thing I would be sure to take with me.”

“Your blessings. Leave them behind on your pillow,” Melissande suggested. “Corene, you must go through your little bag of coins and give us each the blessings we drew the other day.”

“I would, but I don’t have extras,” Corene objected. “We can find cheap replicas in the Little Islands.”

“That will not do us any good if one of us decides to run away tonight.”

Corene laughed. “Then throw some Malinquese coins on your pillow and the rest of us will understand what you meant.”

“That’ll work,” Steff said. “But I still don’t plan to run away.”

“I don’t think you could if you wanted to,” Corene said with a sigh. “So we may as well find ways to entertain ourselves.”

“I have thought of the best idea for tomorrow’s outing,” Melissande announced. “We shall visit the white tower. We intended to go many ninedays ago before—well—our plans changed.”

The others murmured their assent while trying hard not to glance at Alette, but Corene gave the Dhonshon girl a straight and level look. “Yes, I would love to visit the tower,” Corene said. “But
you
have to promise you won’t do anything drastic, or I won’t let you come.”

“Corene!”
Liramelli murmured, but Alette actually smiled.

“I will behave quite properly,” she said. “You will not need to worry about me at all.”

•   •   •

T
he visit to the white tower became more of an expedition than Corene would have liked, since it seemed that
everyone
wanted to join them, even Greggorio and Garameno. She supposed the activity would be good for Greggorio, who still looked shocked with grief, but by the time they added Garameno and his attendant, there were ten of them setting out. Accompanied, of course, by twice that many royal guards and surreptitious Dhonshon soldiers that Alette quietly identified as her father’s men.

“There’s so many of us we could practically invade another country,” Corene muttered to Foley as they assembled in the courtyard.

“Or defend ourselves against foreign armies,” he replied.