Piper’s attention was jostled from the page by a tapping at her door.

“Ashta?” came her chamber lady’s voice. “Anemone has come to say that she and several others are going up to the city. It seems the weather is especially fine there today, and she wonders whether you’d like to join them.”

Piper set the page down with a sigh and got to her feet. Imarah was the soul of discretion, and would likely not even ask what she was reading. But Piper was, technically, supposed to have destroyed her copy of Matt’s document by now, so…best she not be caught reading anything at all. She went to open the door a crack, and offered Imarah a smile. “Sadly, I’ve just received a summons…from Rain,” she extemporized. “I have no idea what it’s about, but I have some things to finish here before I go to see him. Would you tell Anemone how much I appreciate the invitation, and how deeply disappointed I am to be missing out?”

“Of course, Ashta.”

“Thank you. And convey my apologies as well, please, for not coming to decline in person. Rain’s message has just caught me too much in the middle of things…”

Imarah gave her a sympathetic nod, and left to deliver this reply as Piper closed the door and went back to gather up Matt’s document. There’d been no such summons, of course, but she’d have to go find Rain now—or try to—and talk with him about…something. Just in case Imarah mentioned her impromptu excuse to someone. Like her mother.

Piper’s regret was not entirely feigned. Anemone was intelligent, extremely talented, quietly confident, and reliably sincere—any one of which made her a nice change of pace around here. She managed to be charming as well, without ever seeming frivolous—or soft—dealing so properly, yet effectively, with those foolish enough to cross her that most knew better than to try anymore. In fact, she’d have made a much better Ashta than Piper ever seemed likely to, and was among Piper’s very first choices whenever socializing became necessary.

Depending on who these ‘others’ Imarah had mentioned were, Piper knew she should probably have gone up with them to bathe in real sunlight and wander about the riverfront, flirting with shirtless River boys, or ‘people watching’ while hunting through downtown shops for Andinol curiosities. Anemone always managed to make such activities seem outrageously amusing, or profoundly thought-provoking, sometimes even adventurous, and the ability to act like a normal person, and seem to enjoy it, was not an unimportant skill for an Ashta. Piper understood the value of practice as well as anyone—which she likely needed. She had been far better once at things like fun and socializing than she felt these days. But a carefree trip to the zoo, as her acquaintances often called the city, held even less appeal than usual this morning. Piper had been out of sorts for weeks now, ever since her old mistake had been suddenly revived by Matt’s ambush with those geist-stones, and the arrival of his deadly little epic.

She had read through the entire document—several times by now—and been all but able to quote it in her sleep by the time Rain had asked that she destroy her copy—a request she hadn’t brought herself to comply with yet. The stack of pages had become a meditative artifact for her; a dreadful magic mirror of sorts, to which she could not help returning, again and again.

It contained a few revelations that everyone had found disturbing: Rhymer’s encounters with several strange interlopers while training with the Stbriches, most of whom not even Rain had yet been able to account for, and, of course, his alarming encounter with members of the Western Realm as Matt’s friendship with Dustin Bennett had capsized out on the coast. But what had shaken Piper most deeply was Matt’s descriptions of herself, her family, her people and their way of life.

While she remembered a great deal of what the document recounted—she recognized almost none of it. She had never seen anything—including Matt himself—as he described it. Yet, to her mounting distress, his unsettling depictions did not ring false. In fact, each time she reread them, they rang more loudly true—like belated klaxons warning futilely of enemies already long inside the city walls.

She picked up the page she had been reading, intending to place it back into the pile, but ended up just staring at it again. …days later, the conversation still haunted me. ‘Trapped in the wrong story’ was exactly where I’d thought myself the night all this had started, though I’d never have conceived of it in such terms. And here I was again, trapped in a completely different story every bit as wrong, leapt from the proverbial frying pan, right into the fire. How could one possibly know ahead of time what the ‘right story’ might even be—much less go about switching over to it—barring the sort of one-off ‘miracle’ I had stumbled into, of course?

The wrong story.

From the minute she’d read his account of the strange conversation—with one of those mysterious interlopers—in which this idea had been voiced, the phrase had taken root in her mind and grown like an expanding knot under her heart.

An explosive tale all right—but not in the ways she had anticipated. And this had been but one of many rabbit holes she’d fallen into here.

She tucked the page back in its place and returned the manuscript to a song-locked drawer built into the base of her bed. Then, wanting to be sure Anemone and her expedition party were well away before she ventured from her quarters to find Rain, Piper went to stand before a window and gaze out at the world down here ‘under the hill’ as some still quaintly called it. However fine the weather up above, it was dripping wet with blowing fog in her mother’s woods this morning. Pensive, melancholy weather, well suited to Piper’s mood. And perhaps her mother’s too? The weather here, like everything else in their world, was ‘art,’ crafted to meet the needs of the forest and its inhabitants, and to mimic the natural world’s stimulating and delightful variety. But like all the other art here, it was not unaffected by The Lady’s state of mind. Piper knew that her mother had also been struck by Matthew’s unexpected perspective, though, as always, she put little of what she thought or felt on display—even for Piper. They’d hardly discussed Matt’s tale with each other outside of strategic briefings with Rain—who seemed entirely focused on the practical value and/or threat of the manuscript’s contents. Piper had no idea whether Matt’s memoir had affected either of them the way it was affecting her—and had been reticent to ask, lest she simply make herself seem once again the ‘unstable’ leg of their three-legged stool.

Trapped in the wrong story… She had never thought of it that way before, but now could not seem to think of herself in any other way. Yet—just as Matt had also asked—what was there to do about it? What was she, after all these years, if not The Lady’s heir? What other story could there be for her to jump into? She could not even imagine one.

She went to don a shawl of iridescent silk, then headed for the doorway.

Imarah looked up from her reading beside the warm illusion of a small, crackling fire in the parlor hearth, as Piper came through, heading for the foyer. “Should I expect you back for luncheon, Ashta?” asked the woman.

“I don’t know,” said Piper, without slowing down. “That may depend on why Rain wants to see me. You needn’t wait. I have my usual session with Turline at one thirty. I’ll find something to eat before then.”

“Very well, Ashta. Have a lovely day.”

“You too, Imarah. I’ll see you this evening.”

She walked out of her rooms into an elegant hallway dramatically illuminated by the large, exquisitely leaded windows punctuating its dark, beautifully carved and paneled wooden walls. Every one of them framed a gorgeous view. To Piper’s left, they looked out into the edges of the great wood surrounding her mother’s house. To Piper’s right, the windows all revealed sweeping vistas of a long, green valley crisscrossed with dark hedgerows and low, tumbling stone walls, cloud swept and misty today. Farther off, a herd of sheep grazed peacefully across the grassy slopes of a large rock outcrop crowned in dark, wind-shaped cypress.

Except they didn’t, really. While the views to Piper’s left were all of real spaces filled with partially illusory forest, behind the windows to Piper’s right lay nothing, actually, but walls of bedrock, or, in some places, other hallways and compartments of the keep—not that she could tell that with her eyes alone. It took her other senses to know for sure which of the compound’s views—or walls or furnishings—were all they seemed, something else, or not there physically at all; and no one ever bothered exercising those other senses to find out which was which, because such differences had no practical importance—or even meaning. Not here, at least.

Since all sensory experience was constructed in and by the mind, and nothing happening ‘out there’ could be experienced at all until one’s mind constructed that experience for one to have, why should anyone capable of crafting sensory constructs at will inside the mind itself remain confined to—or even concerned for—the external world’s cues? Yes, it was obviously important to be aware of what lay outside of the dream. One mustn’t walk off of a real cliff or into a real fire unprepared, or go too long without real food. But being aware of and accounting for what lay outside the dream didn’t require living there.

The Andinalloi were unable to think of illusion as anything but false because they believed that all legitimate experience lay outside themselves. But the dreams that Piper’s kind lived in were not just superficial displays meant to deceive others. The dream was as real to the dreamer as it was to those who shared it. Older members of the realm, for instance, did not just look younger and healthier. Their centuries-old bodies were not experienced at all—even by themselves—unless they chose to allow it, any more than even Andinol dreamers experienced their actual ages in dreams of being young—or actual physics in dreams of flying. The primary distinction between her own kind and the Andinalloi in this regard lay mostly in the fact that an Andinol mind could perform this trick only while asleep, in a solitary fashion without any rational control, while Piper’s kind could do so communally with elaborate rational control, but, mysteriously, only while awake, or through mechanical assistance.

She’d tried futilely to explain all this to Matt, imagining that his primitive Andinol neurological capacities simply left him blind to the virtual irrelevance of distinctions between mental constructs built in response to external data and equivalent constructs crafted purely by internal choice. But as she’d read his manifesto, she had slowly come to see that, here too, she had failed to understand what she was seeing at the time. Only in watching Matt’s continuing struggle—through his eyes—with questions about ‘what was real,’ had she realized that his actual concerns were not at all confined to shallow questions about ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ physicality. Even as she’d urged him, in such patronizing ways, to practice ‘solving riddles,’ he’d already been struggling with far greater riddles than she herself had yet become truly conscious of, much less ever tried to resolve. Only his account of that ordeal had finally pried her eyes open to the realization that ‘Is this a real tree?’ and ‘Is this a real life?’ were such completely different questions—and that he’d been asking not the former, but the latter all along.

Reading his manuscript, she had finally come to see him—as she never had, or ever tried to, when he’d been right there in front of her—watching them with such attention, and struggling so earnestly with what he saw, as they’d ignored him entirely, struggling with nothing but the inconvenience he posed for them. It had occurred to no one but the Strbriches to take him at all seriously. Those half-breed boys and their eccentric father. Their inexplicable fascination with…talking animals. No, she might never be able to enjoy excursions to the zoo again.

Piper still found the very idea that Matt had been some kind of threatening operative from the start, or even that he’d become one since vanishing, ridiculous. But if it turned out to be true, could they rightly blame him? Having seen herself and her people through his eyes now—even for a moment—Piper didn’t think so.

Having traversed the winding route from her chambers to an exterior doorway, Piper stepped out into the moist gray morning onto a flagstone walkway across the meadow separating the compound’s residential wing from its administrative offices. How was she going to explain this visit to Rain—if he was even there? …Such a stupid excuse, just to avoid an outing with Anemone. Why hadn’t she simply said, ‘No thanks, I’ve made other plans today?’

…Really. …Why hadn’t she?

Piper came to a full stop, turning to gaze at the dewy meadow, as if the answer might be out there somewhere, half hidden at its foggy perimeters. She…hadn’t had…permission somehow. …Just to say no. Not on her own behalf. Someone else’s authority had been required…to justify her refusal of Anemone’s invitation. …Someone else who had authority to make even such trivial decisions! Her mouth fell open in amazement. The Lady’s heir hadn’t felt entitled to say, ‘I don’t wish to go gawk at the zoo today!’ So here she was, halfway across the keep, to fake an unscheduled meeting with her mother’s chancellor, all to cover a silly little lie about what gave her the right to turn down an outing to the city. She shook her head, feeling like someone just woken from a deep sleep to find herself standing naked in the ballroom, holding a bowl of oranges and an umbrella. Had she been this…this spineless all her life? …No. No she hadn’t. She’d been regularly accused of recklessness once! Of being dangerously impulsive! Undisciplined! And now. …Now, just look at her. How had she become… When had she…

She turned around and started back the way she’d come, intending to return to her chambers, and…and what?

“What do I do here?” she asked the air, feeling that knot beneath her heart unwinding like an angry snake. She turned back to stare up at Rain’s office windows. “What am I for?” she shouted, not really caring at that moment who might hear her.

She began taking long, angry strides toward the administrative building. There was something after all that had needed discussing for a long time now. And Rain had damn well better be there, because she wasn’t in any mood to be thwarted yet again.

At the building’s grand portico, she yanked its heavy bronze and beveled glass door open, marched in across the green and white, vine-patterned marble floor of its lobby, and up its imposing black granite staircase to the wide, lushly paneled and carpeted first floor hallway that led to his office suite, at which she knocked—rather loudly.

“What is it?” he responded irritably from inside.

“Not what,” she said. “Who. Are you especially busy, Chancellor?”

A second later, the door was opened. Rain gazed out at her with an expression of puzzlement that changed quickly to concern. “Ashta. What’s happened?”

He looked drawn. His clothing was disheveled, as if perhaps he’d been there all night. This was not how she’d imagined him during her angry march across the meadow. Her determination faltered some, but she was here now, and saw no way of backing out that wouldn’t just leave her looking a bigger fool than ever. “Nothing’s happened,” she said, struggling to fortify the fire inside her before it went out completely. “Nothing ever seems to anymore. That’s the problem.”

He stared at her, his concern becoming puzzlement again. “Pardon, Ashta, but I am not following… What…”

“Must we discuss it in the hallway?”

“Oh!” he said, looking startled as he opened the door more widely and stood aside. “Please forgive me. I’m not at my best this morning. It’s been…rather a long night.”

As she entered, she saw the jumble of message rings on his desk. This was clearly not the right moment for…anything she’d come to say. …And yet, what moment ever was—or ever would be? Was she really going to wait for some more permissible time—even now?

The half formed complaints and demands she’d been imagining would accomplish nothing in this circumstance, however. Nothing helpful anyway. So, how to broach the subject… “What has kept you here all night?” she asked, walking further in.

He gazed at her uncertainly, and turned to close the door. “Someone has gone missing, I’m afraid. Unexpectedly,” he added, as if further proof of his fatigue might be needed. “We finally found Jonah yesterday, and tentative evidence of connections between him and this elusive green flame we’ve been chasing.”

“Really!” This news was almost sufficient to eclipse her original agenda. “So, do you know what the green flame is now?”

Rain shook his head. “We’d hardly found him before he vanished—suddenly last night—as did the operative I’d sent to make his acquaintance.”

“Oh. …Oh dear. Does Mother know?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t leave The Lady unaware of such a thing.”

No need to inform her daughter though, thought Piper, sure she’d have heard nothing of this until their next scheduled briefing, had she not barged in on it this way.

“Unfortunately, I have no further information yet, or even useful speculation to offer about what this development may mean. We are doing all we can to sort it out, of course.” He gestured toward one of the comfortable chairs before his desk. “But you’ve come to discuss some other matter, clearly. Shall we sit down, Ashta?”

“Well…I hadn’t realized I’d find you dealing with so many more important things.”

“No, no, I am at your service. Not everything that matters has to do with Rhymer.”

“But it does, actually,” she said, going to sit down almost despite herself. “I’ve been thinking…about his account of, well, us. And me, specifically.”

Rain came to sit across from her, clearly interested. “And what have you discovered?”

“Nothing about him so much as about me.”

He leaned back, looking puzzled again. “And what is that?”

“Well, now I feel like a fool—which, I suppose, exemplifies the problem, really…” She saw no way to go on that wouldn’t just make her seem exactly like the fatuous, self-absorbed tangent she’d come up here to debunk and renounce.

Rain’s attention became even more focused as her silence persisted. “You have never seemed remotely foolish to me. What makes you feel so now?”

Oh…she had rushed to this so completely unprepared. Hardly an organized or articulate thought in her head. What had she been thinking? Reckless. Dangerously impulsive. As undisciplined as ever. Laughter seemed called for, if only it were even slightly funny. But she was here now, and having opened this box, must find some way to deal with its contents. “I am unclear about my role…at our weekly briefings.”

He tilted his head. “Your role?”

“My mother makes the difficult decisions required of a ruler, and exercises the authority needed to face down whatever opposition they engender. You manage the clearly relentless task of executing her decisions, keeping her informed of everything happening out of her sight, and seeing to it that we are protected from harm.”

He nodded, uncertainly.

“What is my job, Chancellor?”

“Your job?”

“Yes. Why am I even at these weekly briefings?

He seemed flummoxed. “You are The Lady’s heir.”

“Who sits through those meetings listening to you provide valuable information and expertise,” she leaned forward, working to regulate her mounting frustration, “and listening to my mother make weighty decisions in response, while I…” she leaned back again, “am consulted whenever it seems I may have made some new mistake.”

He gazed at her in silence as she waited to see whether this petulant outburst—for that was how it had come out sounding, even to herself—would be rewarded with a condescending smile or a frown of reproof.

He gave her neither, but leaned forward, placing an elbow on the chair’s upholstered arm, and resting his chin on his folded hand. “And what has this to do with Matthew Rhymer?”

“What?”

“You said that you’d been thinking about his account of us. How has that led you to this question?” There was no hint of mockery in his voice or on his face. He seemed genuinely interested, which, in its way, unsettled her more than any of the responses she’d been braced for.

But why prevaricate? She’d opened this. So, open it. “He writes of feeling trapped in the wrong story. I feel trapped that way as well. In a story I’ve no place in—that has no place for me.” Rain opened his mouth to reply, but she raised a hand to forestall him. “I know I sound like a pouty girl, Chancellor—especially in light of everything confronting us now. But this is not just some irrational distemper I’ve come up with after a poor night’s sleep or a bad bowl of porridge. Though I am only growing conscious of it now, I have felt this…for years. We both know how people speak about my brother, and how they speak of me. One of us was born to rule, the other has no talent for it whatsoever. Think back, carefully, and tell me where you’ve seen any part in this story for me except that of recurring cause of trouble.” She leaned in again. “I am not suited for the story I am trapped in, Chancellor. And I have no idea what to do about that.” There! She’d said it—and dreaded his response, even as she felt its weight upon her lifting.

Once again, he considered her in silence, still without apparent disapproval or amusement. Then he drew a long breath, and looked pensively away. “So…you’ve come to tell me…that you want out?”

She looked down, thinking about why she’d come, then shook her head. “That’s not what I came to tell you, really. But I guess it’s what I needed to say.”

Now he did give her the slightest of smiles, amused, but still not condescending. “May I know what you had planned to say—if you wish to tell me, Ashta?”

She shrugged wearily. “I suppose I meant to say that I was tired of being patronized and sidelined, and…demand that I be taken seriously.” She offered him a rueful smile. “I hadn’t really thought it through, I guess. …Do I ever?”

His odd smile widened. “First, Ashta, I beg leave to differ with you about one thing. You do not sound like a pouty girl at all. Nor have you ever in my hearing. What you do sound like is someone who has finally discovered herself ready to engage her ‘story,’ as you call it.”

Piper felt her face slacken in surprise. “How can you extract such a conclusion from anything I’ve just said?”

Rain looked down, as if weighing options, then nodded to himself. “You were an extraordinary child, Piper.” He looked back up at her. “Even as an infant, your eyes never rested on one thing for long—not even your mother’s breast could distract you for more than a minute or two from looking up and around to see what else you might be missing. You’d hardly landed in your bassinette before they started having to equip it with higher railings to keep you from climbing out as soon as your nurse’s back was turned. You were indeed a great deal of trouble as a child—the kind of trouble children who are exceptionally hungry for knowledge and experience, growth and achievement, always are. Every inch your mother’s daughter. And your father’s too—whatever you’ve heard them say of Kobahl lately.”

This was…dreadful. Piper had been braced for many things, but not this. This was not a conversation one had with a chancellor—or with anyone. She had no idea where to look—or what to make of it. Part of her hungered for the approval he seemed to be offering, but his praise hurt somehow as well. Where had this come from? And where could it possibly be going?

“You were once spoken of with every bit as much admiration and anticipation as your brother is now—by those whose opinions were astute enough to matter anyway—until the night that Matthew Rhymer stumbled into our lives—just in time to save yours, it seemed.” He leaned toward her again. “As we weren’t able to discuss the event with anyone, no one’s ever had any frame by which to understand the changes in you after that. Your sudden inward turning, your apparently spontaneous new hesitance and self-doubt seemed inexplicable; and when people are left without explanations, they fill the space with inventions of their own—rarely complimentary—or fair. For years now, your mother and I have watched you walk through the world, head down, sullen or apologetic by turns. If you think back, carefully, I believe you’ll recall moments when she’s tried to talk with you about it. But…all you heard was further criticism; am I wrong?”

She simply stared at him. This part was, oddly, both more disappointing and more comfortable to hear. “I suppose you’re not.”

He nodded and smiled again, if a little sadly. “I’ve seen brief flashes, from time to time, of the girl you used to be. But this is the first time I have seen you stand up angrily, without that shroud of self-judgment, and dare to demand some better regard from us—or from anyone. …I just hope my decision to say these things aloud does not prove me the fool.”

Now she was suppressing an urge to cry that she didn’t begin to understand. “Why should it?” she asked unsteadily.

“I would not want to chase you off, the moment you’d finally shown up again. Promise me, please, that you won’t just sit down now and behave again?”

“Meaning what, exactly? I’m sorry, but I’m still not sure of your point.”

“My point, Ashta, is that if you’re truly tired at last of blaming yourself for that night on Anselm’s doorstep, and for everything that’s gone wrong since—if you’re ready to set down all the self-doubt and that reputation as an ‘erratic disappointment’—then I am eager to put your extraordinary talents to better work in whatever ways we can—and feel confident that your mother will endorse that readiness.” He gave her a look that clearly put the ball back in her court.

So…had this just happened? Could it really have been that simple? She felt sure she must be misunderstanding something. Very badly. But, if not… “So then…would it be permissible to request that I be informed of developments like last night’s at the same time my mother is?”

Now his smile did look amused. “Are you asking me to do this, Ashta? Or for permission to ask me to do this?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I am asking you to do it, Chancellor.”

“Good. I must pass your request by The Lady, of course, but I anticipate no objection from her either. Is there anything else you’d like addressed…at present?”

“What’s happening with Colleen Fischer? Do we know where she’s being held yet?”

Rain’s hesitation was almost undetectable. “My best guess remains that she’s being held in Anselm’s house.”

“Then are we going to do something about that?”

“We still have no certain proof of it, and I dare attempt none of the few things we might do to obtain such answers, one way or another, until I’ve some better sense of who and what this apparent ‘third party’ really is, whether Anselm or Matthew Rhymer are in any way connected to it, and whether it is or isn’t attempting to pit us and Anselm against each other falsely. You were there when we discussed all that the Archivist imparted to The Lady.”

Piper sighed. “So, you still think Matthew was a Trojan horse? Have you found any shred of hard evidence yet to bolster such an improbable concern?”

“I’ve found nothing at all,” said Rain. “Not one solitary thing, despite several weeks of searching. Five men seem to have gone missing in this city during the week after Rhymer’s appearance in that alley, and not one of them matches any part of the former self described in that manuscript. I’ve tried every arcane procedure I can think of to discover traces of him I can follow to some clue of his earlier identity or whereabouts—but he still seems to have come out of thin air. That alone is sufficiently alarming to bolster concern.”

“Well, we’ve no one but ourselves to blame,” she sighed.

Rain’s brows arched. “What does that mean?”

“We never bothered asking him who he’d been, did we?” She arched her brows right back at him. “In all the years that he was with us, not even any of the Stbriches, it seems, ever thought to ask him who he was, or what had made his life so painful that he wanted out of it. We just trained him to bury himself—for our convenience. Now, suddenly, it matters to us.” She shook her head. “How sad for us. That doesn’t make him look any worse, though. Not to me. ”

Rain studied her curiously. “Do I detect irritation, Ashta? …With me?”

“Not with you,” she said. “With all of us—myself included. Maybe we wouldn’t have to worry so much now about who he’d really been if we’d just paid him half as much attention as he paid us.”

Rain turned his palms up. “Perhaps he paid us more attention because we were more exotic to him than he was to us.”

“That’s the problem,” she said sharply. “Right there. We’re the real show, aren’t we? We think ourselves their advocates. Noble protectors of the Andinalloi,” Piper said theatrically. “But we just care about them like we care about the deer and squirrels in my mother’s woods. They aren’t really people to us. They’re like…like endangered hamsters! Even to The Lady. She champions their safety without ever even seeing…” she trailed off, realizing suddenly who she was talking about, and how…hysterical she must sound.

Rain had been studying his own folded hands for some time by now, seeming as reluctant to meet her eyes as she had been to meet his just moments earlier. “Have you spoken with your mother about any of these things?” he said, looking up again at last.

She shook her head, sure she’d ruined everything she had just accomplished.

“May I ask why not?”

Now she looked down. “I really only came to understand most of this on my way here.”

He seemed nonplussed. “You were coming here—to talk with me—before you knew what you wanted to talk about?”

Piper was so covered in her own mud by now. How much worse could one more splash of it make anything? “I only came because I’d told Imarah you had asked to see me this morning.” His brows climbed a notch. “To get out of going to the city with Anemone and her friends.” His brows climbed another notch. “I didn’t…know how else to cover up the lie.” One last notch—largest of the three. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him look more surprised. Unless maybe on the morning he’d found her and Matthew in their Temanghath—though even then he’d been more angry than surprised, as she recalled.

“Why…would you do any of that?” he asked, sounding more mystified than critical.

“Because I couldn’t find permission in myself to say no, even to Anemone,” she said bleakly. “That momentous decision required validation from someone who…mattered enough to supply it, I guess.” She hunched her shoulders. “You were the first one who came to mind.”

He brought a hand up to massage his jaw as he gazed at her. Then he shook his head, and dropped the hand back into his lap. “I stand behind everything I said, Ashta. I think this is a profoundly important moment in your life. But I don’t think I’m the best person to bring it to.”

“Well…who then?” she asked. “You’ve known me longer and better than anyone here. Who else would be able, much less willing, to tell me my own baby stories?”

She’d been mistaken. His brows actually could go higher. “Your mother, perhaps?”

“Take these…petty discontents…to The Lady? Are you serious?”

He looked back at her as if trying to determine whether she was serious. “I said nothing about The Lady. I said, your mother.”

She looked away, not wanting him to see the distress this suggestion inspired. “I suppose you’ll be reporting all of this to her anyway.”

“Oh no. My job is affairs of state. It is not any chancellor’s job to insert himself between a monarch and her children. This is very clearly a family matter—though I am genuinely honored by your confidences, Ashta—which, I assure you, will remain with me to the grave.

“Then…can’t we just forget the last part of this conversation, and move on?”

“That is for you to decide, Ashta. But if you’re asking my advice…” He looked away again, uncomfortably. “I’m going to violate the very policy I just described to you, and say—this once—that I believe your mother may need to hear what you’ve just told me as much as I think you must tell it to her.”

Well, Piper thought, hasn’t this gone wonderfully?