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either. Came back to the city. Started playing cards to pass the time and ended up playing for money, when it turned out I was good at it. And here I am.”
    “Do you ever go back to see your family?”
    “Sure. Steff’s a good kid and I visit when I can. I think he’s pretty lonely. The farm life doesn’t suit him.”
    “I take it he’s not torz.”
    “No, he seems to be coru, though as far as I can tell, no one in his father’s family ever came from blood and water. So I guess it’s no wonder that he doesn’t fit in.”
    “To some extent, it doesn’t matter who we are or where we came from—what kind of family brought us into this world,” Josie said softly. “We become who we were meant to be, and all those other influences fall away.”
    He gave her a speculative look. “I suppose you’re talking from experience?”
    “Certainly I have turned out to be a much different kind of person than I was raised to be.”
    “I take it you spend time here in the slums doing some kind of reform work.”
    “Something like that,” she said a little dryly. “A couple years ago, I bought an abandoned building and refurbished it. Turned it into a shelter with an infirmary, a kitchen, and a whole lot of beds. I provide a safe place for people to sleep if they’re desperate and have nowhere else to go.”
    “Well, unless you have beds for a thousand people, I can’t imagine you can take care of every desperate soul who ends up southside on an average night.”
    “Ah. Well. Some of the people I might consider desperate are perfectly happy with their lives. The ones who come to me are the ones who truly have no other options.”
    He gestured to indicate her plain, inexpensive tunic. “You’re not dressed like it at the moment, but you look to me like someone who comes from money. I’m wondering how your family feels about this little project.”
    She smiled. “My mother is horrified. My brother-in-law brings fairly constant pressure on me to give up the work. My sister—she’s proud of me, actually. She comes sometimes to help out.”
    He glanced toward the sleeping Corene. “A different sister, I take it.”
    “I have quite a few.”
    “That’s what Corene said. She also said that the two of you aren’t actually related by blood.”
    “We were raised as sisters until five years ago. The man we thought was our father turned out not to be. It’s complicated.”
    “That’s also what Corene said.” He waited a beat, then added, “That’s what you called her. She told me her name was Cora.”
    Now she was laughing openly. “She’s being very mysterious. The sweela folk love excitement and intrigue.”
    “And I suppose your name isn’t really Josie.”
    “Close enough. Josetta.”
    That’s when it clicked in his head. Corene. Zoe. Josetta. “Slap me stupid,” he breathed. “You’re the princesses. The ones that weren’t really the king’s daughters.”
    “That’s us,” she said cheerfully.
    He had been watching her covertly ever since she arrived, but now he stared outright. Oh, it had been such a scandal, though overshadowed by a surfeit of scandals that had all piled up at once four or five years ago. First the people of Welce learned that King Vernon was dying. Then they learned that he had been impotent all these years, and his three daughters—by three different wives—had been fathered by loyal courtiers doing their part to give the king his heirs. Then they learned that Vernon’s fourth and youngest wife was carrying her second child and that that baby, miraculously, had been sired by the king.
    A couple of quintiles later, the king had passed away, living barely long enough to hold his infant daughter in his arms. The five primes—the heads of the Five Families—had appointed a regent and an interim governing body that would rule Welce until the girl inherited her crown at the favorable age of twenty-four.
    And while all of Welce waited for that child to grow up, what happened