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directions, but She leaves us to make our own choices. Especially the difficult ones.”
    “I don’t see a choice here,” Bao remarked. “Difficult or otherwise.”
    “Not yet,” I agreed.
    We climbed the wide, winding staircase to the second floor and followed the steward down the hall. Outside the door of a corner chamber, Messire Lambert hesitated. Beyond the door came the sound of women’s voices raised in frantic pleading.
    “Wait here, please,” the steward said to us before knocking.
    The door opened a crack, and a woman with a pretty, harried face peered out, her eyes widening at the sight of the steward in the livery of House Courcel. “Oh, messire! Tell me his majesty’s not sent for her!”
    “No, no,” he assured her. “But his majesty sends visitors. Lady Moirin mac Fainche, and Messire… Bao.”
    Her eyes widened further, showing the whites. “Jehanne’s
witch
?”
    The steward cleared his throat. “As I said, Lady Moirin and her husband.”
    The young woman shuddered. “Elua have mercy! All right, all right, messire. Give us a moment.”
    She closed the door behind her. Sounds of a heated argument interspersed with urgent pleas ensued. Bao raised his brows at me. I shrugged in reply. The royal steward looked profoundly uncomfortable.
    “Oh, let them in!” a second woman’s voice said in frustration, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door. “If the Queen’s witch can lay a spell on the child before she breaks her stubborn neck, so much the better!”
    “Fine!”
    The door was flung open wide. The young woman dropped a curtsy, her face flushed. “Welcome, my lady, my lord.” She made a sweeping gesture. “Forgive us. Her young highness is as you find her.”
    I entered the nursery chamber, and caught my breath.
    It was a pleasant, sunlit chamber with a canopied bed set into the near wall. Against the far wall stood an array of ornately painted cubes filled with cunningly made toys and dolls. Atop a dangerous perch on the highest cube sat a girl of some three years of age, kicking her heels and giggling.
    Jehanne’s daughter.
    Belatedly, it struck me that that was what King Daniel had called her—Jehanne’s daughter, as though she were not his own, too.
    Gazing at her, I understood why. Desirée de la Courcel was her mother in miniature, a picture of gossamer beauty. A thin white shift adorned her small figure, leaving her arms and legs bare, skin so fair the pale blue tracery of her veins showed through it. Her pink lips formed a perfect bow. Her white-blonde hair curled in soft ringlets, haloing her head. Her eyes were Jehanne’s eyes, an ethereal blue-grey.
    And ah, gods! How they sparkled.
    It wasn’t just the resemblance; it was Jehanne’s mercurial spirit that shone forth from her, delighting so shamelessly in her own misbehavior that one could not help but be charmed by it. At least, I couldn’t.
    My heart contracted sharply. Beside me, Bao chuckled.
    Desirée stopped giggling and contemplated us.
    I bowed to her in the Bhodistani fashion, my palms pressed together. “Well met, young highness.”
    “Who are you?” Her childish voice was high and clear.
    I shifted my hands into a calming
mudra
that Amrita had taught me, steepling my middle fingers. “Come down and find out.”
    “No.” Considering it, she shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
    “Well, then, you will have to wonder,” I said.
    Behind us, the nursemaids whispered while the steward questioned them in a frantic hiss, wondering how the child had gotten up there in the first place. It seemed she had climbed the staggered blocks one by one, and refused to come down.
    “She’s uncommonly agile for her age!” the older nursemaid said in an aggrieved tone. “And uncommonly precocious!”
    I ignored them.
    Bao whistled through his teeth, inspecting the toys stored in the hollow cubes. “Look at this, Moirin,” he said cheerfully, showing me a miniature carriage. “The doors open, and the