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help it. He couldn’t ignore the fact that for the first time one of his mother’s dooms had stumbled, which meant there was hope. He couldn’t deny it, and the hope seemed to know it, expanding from an ember to an unquenchable conflagration that reduced all his defensive walls to ashes.
    “All right,” he said, through grinding teeth. “You’d better be right about this.”
    She studied him, then nodded, evidently satisfied this qualified as acceptance, if not gratitude. “I am right.” She took a tentative step forward, a flash of mischief in her eye. “So, what art will you perform your Proof in, Master Courtier: fencing, feasting, or foining?”
    “You forgot feigning .” Harric gave a barren smile. “Yes, I learned those things. But my real training was for more… secret …skills to serve our queen.”
    “It can’t be a secret if it’s your Proof, so you have to tell me.”
    He took a deep breath, trying in vain to calm the turmoil in his chest. Could he truly defeat his doom? What if he failed?
    She arched an eyebrow. “Well?”
    “I’ll make my Proof in the art of the con. That’s my strongest suit.”
    “I knew it! She trained you as a trickster. That’s how you beat my master in poker. It’s probably how she kept her magic secret all those years.”
    He gave a non-committal shrug. “Sadly, all of Gallows Ferry saw me trick your master. The whole outpost will be alert to anything I try now. If I want to con anyone today, I’ll have to focus on new emigrants passing through the market.”
    “How many cons could your mother do in a day?”
    “Nineteen.”
    “Then for your Proof you’ll need twenty.”
    He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Nineteen had been a lucky day for his mother. Her best before that had been twelve.
    “You can do it, Master Harric. You can. I saw you beat my master.”
    Harric nodded. He’d done well against her master, but he’d also been reckless because he didn’t think he’d be alive the next day and therefore hadn’t cared if he made enemies. Now, if they learned he lived, they’d try to kill him themselves if they got a chance.
    “So promise you’ll make your Proof.”
    He nodded. “All right. But if this goes wrong you should probably know I’m going to haunt you from the grave.”
    “I’ll bury you on an island so your ghost can’t cross the water.”
    He laughed and reached out to take her hand, but she jumped back as if he’d held out a rat, and her initial fear returned in a blink. Whirling, she flew down the stairs, but stopped at the landing and looked back. “You can do it, Master Harric. Don’t forget you promised.”
    “I won’t,” he said, more to himself than her, for she had turned and continued her flight down the stairs.
    He closed the door and laid his forehead against its painted wood.
    His heart, which had calmed after the nightmare in the fog, had begun to flutter again like a frightened bird in his ribcage. Twenty cons in an outpost full of enemies and people who knew to watch him. He chuckled grimly. “I’m dead already.”
    “Doomed,” said his mother, behind him. “There’s a difference.”
    He whirled, anticipating murder, only to find her across the room, regarding him with cool amusement.
    “Miss me so?” she said. She looked precisely as she did the day she died, a vision of insanity from his childhood. She wore the same threadbare ball gown she’d fled court in twenty years before, and which she’d worn almost exclusively the last ten years of her life. Scarcely more than a colorless bag now, it hung limp and stinking from bony shoulders. She smiled, cracking her mask of thick white makeup, in fans around her eyes and mouth. Blue lipstick hanging crooked on her lips. Once a subtle and delicate style of makeup in court, years of madness had made it lumpen and clownish.
    He backed against the door with a thump, heart racing. Hurt and anger battled in his chest, paralyzing his tongue.
    She followed his