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princess.”
    “Well, I promise not to mention her in my letters.”
    I wrote Karstor first. I missed him, although I didn’t feel like I knew him well enough to admit it. I suspected it was really my father I missed, but my father felt so lost to me that it was easier to miss Karstor. And Karstor had always seemed so sad. During the day, he made little jokes and went to work for long hours as the new ambassador of magic, but sometimes I found him sitting in a dark room staring off into space, and once I had heard him weeping very softly, just for a moment, but long enough that I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. I had never imagined that powerful men shed tears. I thought of all this, but I kept the note short and friendly. I hoped it would bring a spot of cheer to his day.
    Next I wrote Hollin’s wife, Annalie, and her ladies’ maid, Linza. Annalie was cursed, pained by the touch of light on her skin, butshe seemed content enough to spend her days in a dimly lit room, speaking to spirits and writing. Her life should have been tragic, and yet she didn’t seem to need anyone, as if she were halfway to dwelling in the spirit world herself. It was difficult to think what to say to a woman like that. Linza was easier to talk to in person, but her lack of education showed when it came to letters. Still, they should know we had safely arrived.
    I wanted to write Hollin, but wasn’t sure if he had moved on. Hopefully his travels abroad were all that he hoped for, even if the circumstances weren’t quite what he wished.
    Hollin. I didn’t want to miss him. He had committed so many wrongs—from wooing me while he already had Annalie hidden away, to his inability to stand up to Smollings until the very last moment. It was Erris I loved—or tried to love, if he would have me—but it was Hollin whom I best understood. Hollin had told me once how he had been close to his mother and his uncle Simalt, who had traveled the world. Both had died, like my mother, and I don’t think either of us had known what it was to be cared for ever since.
    I had finished my letters and was sitting quietly, brooding upon unpleasant matters, when Celestina told me dinner was ready.
    In Hollin’s house, I had changed clothes for dinner like a lady, but no one seemed to expect it here. Celestina wore her stained apron, and my clothes bore the grime and scent of travel. A man sat at the table who I knew must be Lean Joe, not just through logic but because he was indeed very lean and weather-beaten, with a nick in his ear like a stray cat. He squinted at me, not with hostility, but curiosity. He had probably never seen a girl from Tiansher before. I was equally surprised to be eating with thehelp, but it seemed to be the way of things here. I suppose with Ordorio gone, they kept Violet company.
    Violet sat at the head of the table, clad in a thick robe that must have belonged to her father, arms crossed around the turned-up sleeves, and wearing the pout that sat so comfortably on her lips.
    Erris burst in from the kitchen with a plate of finely chopped greens, nuts, and apples, all raw and lightly dressed in vinegar.
    Violet took one look at it and shoved the plate away from her so it crashed into the butter dish. “I won’t eat that. It looks disgusting! It looks like food people would eat if they were lost in the forest and starving to death!”
    “It’s the kind of food we ate all day while we were out playing as children,” Erris said, sounding almost delighted at her protests. “Your mother and me and all the rest of us. We didn’t even have vinegar to make it exciting. And you will eat every bite of it before you have any sausage.”
    “No!” she cried. “I thought you were going to be nice! Father would never make me eat something I hated. How could anyone think vinegar was exciting? Celestina, this is unfair.”
    “Don’t you want to get well?” Celestina said in a rather automatic tone.
    “These plants are fresh from the