her way through the evening-dim corridors, the deep, lugubrious waters surging beneath her. The House wrapped around her, in all of its complicated vastness, binding her like the corsets she refused to wear. She had long ago stopped noticing the ancient paintings that hung in its halls but now the strange flat-faced people in their odd clothes seemed far more real than the living people she passed. The sober part of her knew they were nothing to be scared of, but the dull faded faces seemed filled with hate. Vicious. Worse than any courtier. The waves of Gavin-feeling were increasingly violent. Occasionally one swept over her and swamped the tiny boat that was all she had left of herself, making her clutch the walls for support.
No, she thought, furious, the third time this happened. I am not Gavin. I am not hiding in a room somewhere. I am Judah. I am me. Ferociously, she pushed the waves back. She had been pushing back his pain since she was eight years old. This was no different. Her tiny boat grew slightly larger, slightly more sure. She forced herself upright again, and kept going.
Into the solarium, gaudy with courtiers and weird purple gaslights. Too much light. Too many smells. There was music but it didn’t make any sense. She tried to feel for Gavin, but to reach out for him she had to push him back and it was too much, too strange. A hand took her arm.
“Judah,” Firo said in her ear. “What are you doing here, dear girl?”
With no little difficulty, she shook him off. “I’m not a girl. Not your dear.”
He turned her toward him. The gems in his ears glittered black as eyes. She could feel his actual eyes peering closely at her, and when he spoke again his voice was yellow with laughter. “Why, you’re drunk. At the very least. This is no place for you to be out of your head, Judah. Come along, now.”
“No.” The floor felt strange underfoot. Soft. Stretchy.
“Just for coffee.” He sounded impatient. “Something to eat.”
She should not go with him. She knew that. But he was already leading her out of the too-loud, too-bright room; down a purplish hallway to one of the retiring rooms, where food and coffee was always laid out, where the music was quieter and a conversation could be had. In the daytime they were all polished brass and white linen, but this one was firelit and choked with thick herbal smoke that burned her eyes. In a corner she thought she saw two figures twined together in a chair but in her altered state, the deep-colored drapes at the windows seemed to be twining and caressing each other, too, so she didn’t trust what she saw.
Firo deposited her in an empty corner and told her to wait. Curious eyes seemed to glint at her from the two twining figures. She thought she heard foundling. She thought she heard witchbred. Then Firo was pressing a cup of coffee into her hands, delicate white china instead of the thick ceramic they used upstairs. He sat down next to her. She thought he touched her hair, pushed some of it behind her ear. She might have imagined it. She trusted nothing.
“The hunt,” she said.
“Very disappointing. Drink your coffee.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s why it was disappointing.”
“Theron?”
His smile rang off-key and discordant in her ears. “Lord Theron lives, foundling.”
Her worry had been a knotted rope inside her and when she heard those words it snapped, it recoiled, it waved madly around inside her. “To your dismay,” she managed to say.
“To the dismay of some,” he corrected. “To the rejoicing of others.”
“Who?”
“Guess.”
Judah closed her eyes briefly. But her eyelids were lined with colorless shapes that she did not like so she opened them again, and said, “I don’t speak courtier.”
“Particularly not in your current state. Who in the world got you like this, and why didn’t they stay to finish the job? Setting you free in the solarium like that is throwing a baby bunny to the hounds.”
“Shut up. Tell me what you know.”
“Well, which, dear?” He laughed, delighted with either the question or her muddled state. When she bristled—was she sprouting actual bristles?—he held up a jeweled hand. “Easy, foundling. Don’t call any more attention to yourself than you must. It’s considered poor taste to notice other people on a night like this, but I’m not sure you count as people. Also, I know nothing. I only hear things. There’s a subtle