The twins ate dinner in the east wing on formal occasions. On the others they ate in the kitchen with the staff, which Selene had arranged without discussion and which Alistair had never directly noticed or un-noticed, the distinction mattering to no one except the people it mattered most to.

Vane found out about the kitchen arrangement from Mia.

He had been coming back from the afternoon Crucible session along the east wing corridor when she appeared from a doorway at knee height, looked up at him, and said: "You’re tall."

"Yes," he said.

She considered him. She was seven, with her mother’s colouring and her father’s precision in the eyes, which was a combination that would be formidable in about fifteen years. "Val says you’re from Oakhaven."

"Yes."

"Is Oakhaven scary?"

"Parts of it."

She thought about this. "Leo’s scared of the dark," she said, as though offering a trade.

"Most people are at some point."

"Not Val." Matter-of-fact. "Val’s not scared of anything."

He looked at her. "She is," he said. "She’s careful about which things."

Mia looked at him for a moment. Then she held up the small book she was carrying. "I have a Chapter left. Can you tell me if the ending is good before I get there?"

"That defeats the purpose."

"I don’t like surprises."

He thought about this. "Neither does Valerica," he said. "Ask her. She’ll tell you."

Mia looked at the book. Then back up at him. "She never does the kitchen dinners anymore," she said. "She used to, before the academy. When she comes back now she sits at the long table with Father."

He didn’t say anything.

"It’s fine," Mia said, in the tone of someone who had learned to say that before anyone could ask. "Leo likes the long table."

She went back through the doorway with her book.

He stood in the corridor for a moment. Then he went to find Valerica.

She was in the east wing library. Not the main collection — the smaller room at the end of the corridor that the estate used for working papers and current correspondence, a room that felt used rather than displayed. She was at the desk with something open in front of her and a cup of blend going cold at her elbow.

She knew he was there when he came in. She always did.

"How was it?" he said.

"Fine." She turned a page. "His resistance calibration is targeting the shoulder initiation. He’ll move to the hip next session."

"I know."

"He’ll increase the field density when you correct it." She looked at the page. "He finds the adjustment, then he makes the environment harder to see if the correction holds or if you fixed the symptom rather than the cause."

"Did he do that to you?"

"He’s been doing it since I was twelve." She turned another page. The cup was at her elbow and she hadn’t touched it. "It works. I’m not complaining about the method."

He sat down across from her. The library was warm, the evening lamp doing its small work. He thought about Mia in the corridor with her book and the kitchen dinners and the careful fine.

"Mia," he said.

Valerica looked up.

"She told me Val’s not scared of anything," he said.

Something moved in Valerica’s expression. Very small. "She’s seven."

"I told her you’re careful about which things."

She looked at him for a moment. Then she looked back at the papers. "She doesn’t need to know the actual list."

"No," he said. "She just needs to know the list exists."

Valerica was quiet. She turned a page. He watched her not drink the cold blend.

"She used to do the kitchen dinners when you were here," he said. "Before the academy."

"Mia talks a lot."

"Yes."

A pause.

"I don’t want her sitting at the long table," Valerica said. "Not yet. She’s still—" She stopped. She turned the page back, which meant she hadn’t read what was on it. "Leo can manage it. Mia holds still, which looks like the same thing, but it isn’t."

"I know," he said. "I saw."

She looked at him. The dark eyes doing the flat assessment.

"The glass," he said. "When Alistair asked about the breach. Leo didn’t move. Mia moved two degrees toward you and then stopped herself."

She was quiet for a moment.

"She’s been doing that since she was four," Valerica said. "She moves toward the person she needs and then stops because she’s learned the stopping. She hasn’t learned yet that she has to stop in every room." She paused. "Or maybe she has and I don’t want her to have."

He looked at her.

"You’re going to say something encouraging," she said.

"No."

She held his gaze. Then, almost against her will, the corner of her mouth moved. "Good." She picked up the blend, looked at it, put it back down. "It’s cold."

"You’ve had it for an hour."

"I’ve been working." She stood and went to the small lamp on the shelf above the desk and adjusted it for no visible reason. She stood at the shelf with her hand on the lamp’s base. "Harren told me why he did it," she said. "The Warden-track."

"I know. I heard part of it."

She turned her head slightly. "The east terrace wall."

"I moved when I had enough."

"You had enough very quickly." But no edge in it. She stood at the shelf and he sat at the desk and the lamp made the room warm. "He thought he was protecting me," she said. "He spent three years positioning himself to absorb what Alistair would have otherwise pointed at me." She paused. "He’s not wrong that it worked. He’s wrong that I needed protecting more than I needed to know."

"Both things can be true."

She turned from the shelf and looked at him. The expression she wore when she was thinking something she hadn’t yet decided to say.

"He asked about you," she said.

"What did he ask?"

"He asked if you understood what you were walking into." She came back to the desk but didn’t sit. She stood on the other side of it. "I told him you were from Oakhaven. That you had been walking into things you didn’t fully understand since you were twelve and your record was excellent."

He looked at her.

"He said that wasn’t the question," she said.

"What’s the question?"

She pressed her lips together briefly. "Whether you understand what being here means. Not the estate. This." She looked at him with the dark eyes, the Celestial Heart ambient and quiet. "He has the records. He knows the configuration."

"And?"

"And he said: he understands enough." She paused. "I don’t know if he meant that’s sufficient or that it’s a problem."

"Did you ask?"

"No." She pulled her chair back and sat down. "I didn’t want him to tell me it was a problem." She looked at the papers. "That’s probably cowardly."

"No," he said. "That’s knowing which questions to ask when."

She looked at him for a moment.

"You’re good at this," she said. Flat, accurate, simply true.

"At what?"

"Hearing what I actually mean." She picked up the cold blend and drank it. Made no comment about the temperature. Set it back down. "Most people hear what I say. You hear the thing underneath it." She paused. "It’s irritating."

"You told Isole that too."

"I tell everyone that," she said. "It’s universally irritating." The corner of her mouth doing the thing. She looked at the papers. "I’m glad she came."

He looked at her.

"She needed to not go back there," Valerica said. "And I wanted her here." She said it with the same flat accuracy she’d brought to he understands enough — simply true, no decoration. "Both things."

"I know," he said.

She looked at him. He looked at her. The lamp was warm.

She was going to say something — he could tell the way he could always tell, the slight gathering of precision into the form it took when she was about to name something — when the knock came at the library door.

One of Alistair’s staff. Formal posture, brief message.

"The Duke requests your presence in the study. Both of you. At your convenience."

Which meant immediately.

Valerica stood up. Straightened her already-straight jacket. She looked at Vane.

"The capital," she said.

"You knew."

"Selene always has the formal cases brought up before he announces things." She moved to the door. She paused beside him. "It’s a good trip," she said quietly. "Even with what it is."

She went through the door.

He looked at the desk for a moment — the papers, the cold cup, the small lamp still burning — and then followed.