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eat, and it was only sensible to make sure none of it went to waste. Mieka knew that these considerations were neither here nor there nor anywhere else to Lady Jaspiela’s way of thinking. She would take offense at any implication that other people’s leftovers were needed to feed her household. So Mieka had had a brief word with his mother earlier, and she had nodded understanding.
    “A proud woman, she is,” Mishia Windthistle had sighed. “One could wish she’d unbend enough to say how proud she is of Cayden… oh, she is, and no mistaking it,” she’d added when Mieka stared at her. “How could any mother not be priding herself on a son like that?”
    There were mothers, and then there were mothers, as Mieka knew very well. But he didn’t belabor the point. Now, as Jeska and Rafe hugged their tregetour farewell for the night, and Lady Jaspiela raised her noble voice impatiently, Mieka sighed a sigh of his own. One day the woman might admit she was proud of her elder son. He didn’t plan to sit up nights waiting for it.
    “Quill!” He saw his friend turn towards him, and heaved the package. Cade barely caught it. “For if you get cold,” Mieka told him.
    Rafe pretended amazement. “There’s a
girl
tied up in there?”
    Crisiant gave her husband a thoughtful glance. “Cade has always liked them pocket-sized, hasn’t he?”
    Cade made a face at her and undid the ribbon. The counterpane unwrapped itself. Mieka doubled over laughing as Cade struggled to keep it off the ground. Jeska cowered back in mock horror, yelling, “It’s alive!”
    “A sword!” Rafe called out. “A knife! A toasting fork! Anything to stab it before it eats my tregetour!”
    “Don’t be so bleedin’ silly!” Mieka chided. “Not enough meat on him to tempt a starving cat.”
    Cade eventually wrestled most of the slippery silk into his arms. He wore a look of comical helplessness—quite deliberate, Mieka knew. Quite the entertainer himself at times, was Cayden Silversun.
    Mieka clucked his tongue against his teeth as he tucked up a few loose folds. “Clumperton. It’s a miracle, it is, that you can put one foot in front of the other and not fall over. Go on, get in and spread that over your mother and brother before they freeze. Happy Namingday, Quill!”
    The gray eyes glinted merrily at him. “And to think I’ve a whole year and more to think up something for
your
twenty-first!”
    “I tremble in terror, O Great Tregetour,” Mieka assured him.
    “You’d damned well better!”
    A few minutes later the counterpane had been duly deployed to keep the carriage’s occupants warm. Kearney was full of praise for its beauty and the skill of its makers. Lady Jaspiela unbent enough to finger the design of feathers and nod approval. Derien was already asleep on Mistress Mirdley’s lap. Mieka waved them onto the road, then returned to the courtyard.
    It was a rather abrupt end to the party. Yazz had doused the bonfire. Robel was stacking chairs, and Mieka spent a minute or two admiring the swish and rustle of her skirts and the lusciousfigure beneath them. Jezael was consolidating the remains of three barrels of ale into one, and Mieka offered to help by draining one of them down his own throat. His elder brother snorted.
    “Help me with these or I’ll drown you in one of them—the way Mum should’ve done to you at birth.”
    “That I was born at all is your fault, yours and Jed’s,” he retorted, and helped Jez heft a barrel. “You turned out so revoltingly adorable that she wanted more. How was poor Mum to know she’d get me and Jinsie instead?”
    “It’s a wonderment to me that Cilka and Petrinka and then Tavier and Jorie came along, then. And I’ve no idea in the world why your little Jindra is such a darling, with you for a sire. Are you planning on more? Or are you scared you might get something like
you
next time?”
    The barrel safely drained, Mieka pushed it into his brother’s massive chest. It made no