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Glim? He’d been gone an awfully long time.
    She went to a polished cypress cabinet and withdrew two small objects wrapped in soft gecko skin. She unwrapped them carefully, revealing a locket on a chain and a life-sized likeness of a sparrow constructed of a fine metal the color of brass but as light as paper. Each individual feather had been fashioned exquisitely and separately, and its eyes were garnets set in ovals of some darker metal.
    As her fingers touched it, it stirred, ruffling its metal wings.
    “Hey, Coo,” she whispered.
    She hesitated then. Coo was the only thing of value her mother had left her that hadn’t been stolen or sold. Sending her out was a risk she didn’t often take. But Glim had had more than enough time to get to the waterfront and back, hours and hours more. It was probably nothing—maybe he was drinking with his cousins or something—but she was eager to find out what the Psijic priest had to say.
    “Go find Glim,” she whispered to the bird, conjuring the image of her friend in her secret eye. “Speak only to him, hear only at his touch.”
    She purred, lifted her wings, and drifted more than flew out of the open window.
    “Annaïg?”
    Her father’s voice again, nearer. She went out, closing the door behind her.
    She met him near the top of the winding flight. He was red in the face from wine or exertion or probably both.
    “Why didn’t you just ring the bell, Taig?” she asked.
    “Sometimes you don’t come down right away,” he said, stepping aside. “After you.”
    “What’s the rush?” she asked, descending past him.
    “We were going to talk,” he said.
    “About the trip to Leyawiin?”
    “That, and other things,” he replied.
    The stair came to a landing, and then continued down.
    “What other things?”
    “I haven’t been a very good father, Thistle. I know that. Since your mother died—”
    There was that annoying tone again. “It’s been fine, Taig. I’ve got no complaints.”
    “Well, you should. I know that. I tell myself that I’ve been doing what’s needed to keep us alive, to keep this house …” He sighed. “And in the end, all meaningless.”
    They passed the next landing.
    “What do you mean, meaningless?” she asked. “I love this house.”
    “You think I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “I do. You pine to leave here, this place. You dream of the Imperial City, of studying there.”
    “I know we don’t have the money, Taig.”
    He nodded. “That’s been the problem, yes. But I’ve sold some things.”
    “Like what?”
    “The house, for one.”
    “What?” She stopped with her foot on the floor of the antechamber, just noticing the men there, four of them—an Imperial with a knobby nose, an orc with dark green hide and low, brushy brows, and two Bosmeri who might have been twins with their fine, narrow faces. She recognized the orc and the Imperial as members of the Thtachalxan, or “Drykillers,” the only non-Argonian guard unit in Lilmoth.
    “What’s going on, Taig?” she whispered.
    He rested his hand on her shoulder. “I wish I had more time, Thistle,” he murmured. “I wish I could go with you, but this is how it is. Your aunt will see you get to the Imperial City. She has friends there.”
    “What’s happening, Taig? What do you know?”
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Best you not find out.”
    She brushed his hand from her shoulder. “I’m not going to Leyawiin,” she said. “Certainly not without a better explanation and certainly not without you—and Glim.”
    “Glim …” He exhaled, then his face changed into a visage utterly alien to her. “Don’t worry about Glim,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She could hear the panic building in her voice. It was as if it had pulled itself outside of her and become a thing of its own.
    “Tell me!”
    When he didn’t answer, she turned and strode for the door.
    The orc stepped in her