Sabine was sitting and reading at a desk in the corner of her chamber—one of only three pieces of furniture she’d had brought into what had already been a richly appointed sitting room—when there was a polite knock at the door.

“Do come in,” she said, putting down her finger to mark her place in the lines of arcane text before closing the book.

A petite Northumbrian blonde in a bright orange dress appeared in the doorway, holding a small box. Behind her, one of the duke’s servants was carrying a platter of scones, which he quickly set on a side table before rushing off.

“I thought that perhaps, since you shared your house’s personal tea blend with me, I might return the favor,” Elizabeth said. “That is, if it is a good time for tea? I spoke with the servants, and they said you had not been seen outside of your chamber yet today.”

“There is not much reason for me to wander the tower, and only the inner keep is warded,” Sabine said. “It’s been made quite clear that someone wishes to thin our numbers before the wedding, and I intend not to be thinned.”

Elizabeth’s eyes flicked down from Sabine’s daringly deep decolletage to the taller woman’s fuller hips, and a wry smile quirked one corner of the petite woman’s mouth. “Not coming down for breakfast with the rest of us may thin you in a different way, though that is not what brought me here. I wander to avoid boredom—not all of us brought a library of our own.” She waved at the tome on Sabine’s desk. “Conversation has been my main form of entertainment, and there are only so many people at loose ends.”

“We could play a game of chess,” Sabine said, gesturing at a low table in the corner. “That is, if you’d like to do more than simply chat. I’ve found chess always staves off boredom.”

“Only if you spot me a castle and a pawn,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head as she made her way to a freshly reupholstered chair that had once been beige. “And only after we have had tea. By now, I know better than to play you on even terms.”

“Perhaps a ship and a pawn?” Sabine asked, sitting across from Elizabeth on a couch. “A castle is a great deal to give up.”

“A ship is quite a bit less important than a castle,” Elizabeth said, kicking her legs idly. “Two ships.”

“Both ships? You would have me landlocked.” Sabine grinned. “Fine—I will let you sink my ships before the match is begun.”

A powerful and familiar presence suddenly filled her mind, and Sabine let her vision unfocus, Elizabeth fading into an orange blur.

I have news for you, Avery’s voice rumbled in her head.

Sabine shivered. She didn’t know what kind of magic Avery had to speak to her as he did, but the fact that the magic was unknown to her meant that its limits were unknown. She worried Avery might pull secrets out of the privacy of her thoughts at any moment, which meant that every fresh moment of contact came with a frisson of fear and excitement: Plans past and present, her deepest desires, even embarrassing memories might be exposed.

Your Grace, I await your news, Sabine sent back, then focused her concentration on vividly imagining licking the duke’s chest. Just as she didn’t know if Avery could see her deeper secrets, she didn’t know if Avery could see what she concentrated on imagining, but that didn’t stop her from doing so in the hope of teasing her future husband.

It is grave news. If you are not seated, you should sit down. Avery’s voice sounded tense and uncomfortable.

Very well. I am seated. Sabine sighed heavily. Tell me.

Your father is dead, Avery sent, then continued. There was an incident at the manufactory site for the York Textile Company—an alchemical poison, the same gas used in the attack on the Golden Fleece.

After the first four short words, the others slid over and past Sabine’s consciousness without comprehension, drowned out by a rising tide of emotion. Instead, everything faded to black.

“Hey, wake up,” a soprano voice said.

Something warm and wet moved across Sabine’s face, and she opened her eyes with a start. A furry gray canine face stared at her, its mouth gaping as it panted; then the hound darted forward to lick her again. She pushed it away, sitting up and blinking away stickiness from her eyes. Her cheeks were wet and not just from the dog’s actions.

An orange blur through wet eyes soon resolved clearly into the petite figure of Elizabeth. “I’m fine,” Sabine said.

“What’s wrong with you? This was worse than the last attack,” Elizabeth said. “Once, I can overlook; twice, though—and this time, you fell into a swoon and stayed there until the hound woke you from it. You didn’t just drop a teacup.”

Sabine wiped at her eyes and face with a handkerchief, then held it up. One of her maids hustled forward to take it, while the other rushed forward with a clean handkerchief. She bit her lip, considering how much to tell the woman in front of her. Petite and girlish, but also her highest-ranked rival. “To start with, I will say that I have never had any attacks before,” Sabine said. “And—well, I was caught off-guard. I did not anticipate what I learned.”

“Do you have the sight?” Elizabeth cocked her head.

“No,” Sabine said reflexively, then bit her lip as she realized that would have made a fine lie. “At least not that I know of. I blame His Grace.” She started to point up at the ceiling, but then hesitated, her finger swiveling to point northeast as she realized she wasn’t sure where Duke Avery was, exactly. Northeast feels right, though, she thought to herself, then shook her head.

“Did he put some kind of curse on you?” Elizabeth frowned.

“No, no…” Sabine said, struggling to find an answer. Her normal poise had deserted her. Between the fact that her face felt like it had been wrung dry like a sponge, the grave news she did not want to think about, and the contract she had signed in blood, she could not think of a good lie, so instead, she decided to tell the truth. “His Grace can speak to me whenever he pleases. It is one of his uncanny powers.”

“I didn’t hear him,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve heard Fiona speak from a distance, and I’m told you know that spell as well—nothing unnatural about that.”

“No, not like the spell,” Sabine said. “Directly into my head, where only I can hear it.”

A look of pity formed on Elizabeth’s face. “If you say so,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps you need that tea? Maybe some scones? I haven’t seen you eat any yet—have you been fasting?”

Sabine nodded, eager to end the line of questioning. “Yes, perhaps I should eat something,” she said. “And let us talk of something else. I promise I will not fall over again.”

Rather than returning to the chair she’d been sitting on, Elizabeth sat right next to Sabine on the couch as Sabine’s maids bustled about, one brewing a fresh pot of tea and the other bringing over the tray of scones. Sabine felt crowded by the smaller woman, but it would be hardly couth to complain.

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“If you feel the slightest bit faint,” Elizabeth said as the first maid brought over a cup of tea, “let me know, and I will catch your teacup for you.”

“Thank you,” Sabine said. “But really, a change of topic is called for.”

“I still say no to your earlier proposal,” Elizabeth said. “I did inform Johanna of it as well, and she agreed that she would also refuse you if you tried to jump the line with her.”

“Ah, that,” Sabine said. “I… am no longer worried about my father’s pride being pricked so much. And if my granduncle objects, well, I am sixth in line for his throne, and he should be in no hurry to disinherit me.”

“I thought you were seventh in line for the throne of Lancaster,” Elizabeth said, holding up a scone. “Now, here, have a scone; you really should eat something before you keel over again.”

Sabine took the scone from Elizabeth and nibbled daintily. “Oddly enough, I do feel a little better now,” she said.

There was a knock at the door, and then it opened, revealing Lady Maude. “She’s here,” Maude said, and Sir Marcus stepped into view.

The tall man cleared his throat. “Lady Sabine, I regret to inform you that your father is dead.”

Elizabeth’s right arm discreetly snaked around behind Sabine’s back, prepared to arrest any swoon, while her left hand hovered in front of the two of them, her eyes fixed on Sabine’s teacup.

Sabine chewed the bite of scone in her mouth and swallowed. The clump of chewed dough sat heavily in her stomach, but her eyes had no tears left. “Thank you for informing me promptly, milord seneschal,” she said. “How did he die?”

Elizabeth’s grip around Sabine’s waist slackened as both she and Lady Maude looked at Sabine in silence.

“You take that news very well,” Sir Marcus said. “There was a flood of noxious gas in the middle of the city. Dozens are dead, and dozens more lives hang in the balance. He was close to the center—one of the first to die.”

“I see,” Sabine said. Her face ached, remembering the sudden flood of tears she had released face-first in the couch. “The house we rented in town—have it cleared out. One of my maids will accompany your men. My father’s body—burn it.”

“Burn it?” Elizabeth cocked her head sideways.

“Yes,” Sabine said, then lied. “It’s what he would have wanted. I will need his things—I need to send my brother his signet ring, for one thing—but burn his body.” She had previously resigned herself to the possibility she would not see her father again but rarely; if his corpse disappeared completely into ashes unseen, his death would be something only spoken to her. Something that she could put aside. Because it was something she felt she had to put aside. “Is there anything else?”

Mutely, Sir Marcus shook his head. As the door closed, Sabine could hear Lady Maude’s voice. “Is there anything else, she says? Not a single tear?”

Sabine turned her head and looked at Elizabeth, who was staring at her. “What His Grace told me—that is why I said I was sixth in line for the throne of Lancaster. He told me. Do you believe me now?”

Elizabeth hugged the taller blonde.

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The Castle Penrose—named after the family of the second wife of a previous Duke of Lancaster, a Cornish noblewoman, and bestowed originally on her son—was, for the most part, a low wooden building with two stories. However, some kinds of magic become more difficult if one is close to the earth, which motivated the construction of three stone towers, each connected to the manor house via short elevated walkways.

Stephen was not a master of divination, and he felt he needed every bit of assistance possible in getting a clear image out of a crystal ball. For this reason, the top floor of the eastern tower held a three-legged chair perched next to a seven-sided table. A crystal ball the size of an ogre’s skull was mounted in the center of the heptagonal table.

“Petronilla Mallory, where are you?” Stephen asked aloud, staring hard into the luminous depths of the ball. There was the image of a circular cluster of stones, some standing and some fallen, surrounded by an outer ditch and earthen bank, but there was no Petronilla Mallory to be seen at the henge today.

It wasn’t likely she had screened herself from view—Petronilla was only a journeyman divinitrice. She had been through a dilettante’s course at Oxford, dabbling in every subject at whim, with a surplus of talent but lacking the dedication to pursue any single course to mastery. Her latest project was studying the old henges, and her approach was a matter of trial and error.

At first, Stephen had checked in on her if it had been more than two weeks since her last letter; then he’d scried and found her clad in nothing more than swirls of blue body paint. She had been doing handstands on top of one of the lintels in an effort to invoke its long-dormant power. Since then, his letters had grown more frequent, and he’d made a hobby out of practicing his scrying skills more often regardless of how long it took her replies to arrive.

Not that he’d been able to keep up with either scrying or correspondence while in dreadfully dreary York. Hopefully, she would forgive the delayed response to his letters. But where was she? Cautiously, he traced his fingers around the table, and the image of the henge shrank. He could see a cluster of little white blobs—sheep. Was that Petronilla in the yellow dress?

Before he could refocus the view more closely on the tiny figure in the yellow dress, a great shadow swept across the site of the henge, moving from west to east. The shadow had a body, a long neck, a tail, and outstretched wings that spanned the whole width of the ditch. Stephen inhaled suddenly in surprise, stammering as his fingers danced, trying to redirect the view to catch sight of a rapidly moving creature at an unknown altitude. The ball flashed with gold for a moment, and then Stephen’s concentration was interrupted as a chime sounded in mid-air in front of him. The globe went dark.

A man’s voice spoke, vaguely familiar. “This is the Pride of Penrose—we have been forced to make landing early—the Irish have made a landing in Cornwall in force. The Prince of Cornwall has done nothing to stop them, but the Prince of Wales guards his own coast—we made port in Cardiff.”

Stephen groaned, sensing the beginning of a headache, backlash from his interrupted connection with the crystal ball. Presumably that was the captain, or perhaps the captain’s first mage. That would explain the familiarity of the voice, as well as the fact that they’d been able to contact him by spell; he’d met both at dinner a time or two. He shook his head. The news was important, but there was nothing to be done about it until after his father returned from York in any event. He chanted under his breath, the crystal ball filling with dim, blurry, white fog, then another chime sounded and the orb went black.

“Of course there’s more for him to say,” Stephen growled to himself.

To his surprise, the voice that sounded from mid-air this time was Sabine’s. “Father is dead. Murdered. But not by the duke. I don’t know who, yet. I am sending you his signet ring.”

Stephen sat there. “That’s not funny,” he said, fully aware that Sabine couldn’t possibly hear his statement. “Don’t joke about that.” His father wasn’t dead. Everything was happening all at once. No, his father wasn’t dead, and that meant that his sister was playing a joke on him, one in very poor taste.

A third chime. Sabine again. “Under the circumstances, I have decided on cremation. I do not think it would be safe for you to visit York, and you will have matters to take care of at Castle Penrose.”

Stephen stared blankly at the darkened orb. Burning their father’s body? What a bizarre and wasteful notion. “You what? Now I am certain you are joking with me. Look—I cannot be provoked into—”

A fourth chime. “Stephen,” Sabine’s voice said raggedly. “I love you. Please stay safe.”

Stephen sat in silence, waiting for another chime to sound, his mind racing through possibilities as grim certainty settled on him. Sabine was telling him the truth, as she knew it. Perhaps not the whole truth, though, only the truths she could tell while being overheard by the duke’s servants.

The Duke of York had ravished Stephen’s sister, then claimed her for one of his many concubines. Their father had, for pragmatic reasons, decided to assent to that arrangement. But if Guilbert de Lancaster changed his mind, then the duke would have had a reason to have him murdered.

And above all else, Stephen could not possibly stand for his father to be destroyed. Not when he could be brought partially back—as a zombie of the Scottish variety or, more usefully, as a consulting skull if they could get a master necromancer to work quickly enough. He knew barely anything about the details of his father’s business dealings, and that could become troublesome.

He uncovered the magelight on the side table, blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness, and then rang for a servant. “I need my flying gloves and jacket. And have sandwiches brought up as well—and my red bag. Make haste; it is a matter of urgency.”