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Mikhail’s younger offspring, but she treated Domenic as if he were invisible, or worse, as if he smelled bad. And Nico was such a good lad, so serious and thoughtful, unlike Rory, who was born for mischief. Yllana was still too young to be fully formed, but was of reasonable intelligence, clever with her fingers, quick-tongued like her mother, and cautious like Mikhail.
    Grimly, she pushed aside these distracting thoughts. It was time to begin a clean copy of the entire manuscript, and while she could have given the job to someone from the Musicians Guild, Marguerida wanted to do it herself. She had managed to sort out the usual morning’s work quickly—the menu for the evening meal with dishes that would not unsettle Regis’ now finicky stomach, an ingress of mice into one of the flour bins in the kitchens, and several other minor matters. It was a normal day, full of trivial problems.
    For the present, the children were occupied, although there was always the chance that her difficult foster daughter, Alanna Alar, would interrupt her. Nico, her secret favorite, was doing his Guard duty, and Rory was scrubbing a wall he had adorned with chalks and paints a few days before. It was rather a nice mural, and she was sorry to tell him to destroy it, but she could not allow her troublesome middle child to get in the habit of defacing walls. It was bad enough that he gorged himself to illness on stolen tarts from the kitchens, showing every sign of taking up thievery as a fulltime occupation. Marguerida wondered if some of that tremendous energy might not be channeled into art, at which Rory seemed quite talented. But this was an idle thought, for in a few months he would go to Arilinn for his first training, and after that, the Cadet Guards would be his future. His life was laid out for him, as much as it could be with things so uncertain.
    Marguerida’s years on Darkover had not been untroubled, and the Terran Federation had been at the root of most of it. In the prior two decades the Federation had increased pressure on Darkover to give up its Protected status and join the Federation as a full member. This would have meant paying taxes into the coffers of the ever more rapacious Terrans, as well as making drastic alterations in the way in which Darkover was governed. When a planet became a part of the Federation, it became subject to the Federation, and essentially lost autonomy over its own resources and governance. For that reason, Lew had strongly advised against surrendering their Protected status, a choice which had allied him with Javanne Hastur. It had not particularly pleased Javanne to have Lew agree with her, since her youthful dislike of him had now hardened into something approaching fanatic hatred, but at least it had ended rancorous argument between them during Comyn Council meetings. Council meeting “debates” tended to be emotionally heated and often vindictive, leaving Marguerida with a profound desire for peace and quiet. But as Lew calmly told her, there was no peace on Darkover because if everyone agreed, it would be unnatural.
    Instead of starting to work, Marguerida found her thoughts drifting toward the problems the Federation continued to create for Darkover. It was very annoying, really, not to be able to concentrate. Then she paused, frowned down at the music, and then gazed at the fire in the hearth. She had become extremely disciplined while she studied with Istvana Ridenow, and it was unusual for her mind to go off on tangents like this. Perhaps there was some reason for her fussing.
    Marguerida kept abreast of the deteriorating relationship between Darkover and the Federation, even though she tried to remain in the background as much as possible. One of the things which Javanne disliked about her was that she was in a position to influence the views of her husband, her father, and others in Comyn Castle. Javanne assumed she would interfere, because that was just what Javanne would have done,