In A Garden Burning Gold E-Book

Rory Power

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver meets Game of Thrones in a mesmerising and unputdownable Balkan fantasy novel of family and survival from the instant New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls. Rhea and her twin brother Lexos have spent an eternity helping their father rule their small, unstable country. For a hundred years, they've been each other's only ally, defending one another against their father's increasingly unpredictable anger. Now, with an independence movement gaining ground and their father's rule weakening, the twins must take matters into their own hands to keep their family – their entire world – from crashing down around them. But other nations are vying  for power, ready to cross and double cross, and if Rhea and Lexos aren't careful, they'll end up facing each other across the battlefield.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for the Author

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Dramatis Personae

Chapter One: Rhea

Chapter Two: Alexandros

Chapter Three: Rhea

Chapter Four: Alexandros

Chapter Five: Alexandros

Chapter Six: Rhea

Chapter Seven: Rhea

Chapter Eight: Rhea

Chapter Nine: Rhea

Chapter Ten: Alexandros

Chapter Eleven: Rhea

Chapter Twelve: Rhea

Chapter Thirteen: Rhea

Chapter Fourteen: Alexandros

Chapter Fifteen: Alexandros

Chapter Sixteen: Alexandros

Chapter Seventeen: Rhea

Chapter Eighteen: Rhea

Chapter Nineteen: Rhea

Chapter Twenty: Rhea

Chapter Twenty-One: Alexandros

Chapter Twenty-Two: Rhea

Chapter Twenty-Three: Rhea

Chapter Twenty-Four: Rhea

Chapter Twenty-Five: Alexandros

Chapter Twenty-Six: Alexandros

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Alexandros

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Rhea

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty: Rhea

Chapter Thirty-One: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty-Two: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty-Three: Rhea

Chapter Thirty-Four: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty-Five: Rhea

Chapter Thirty-Six: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Rhea

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Alexandros

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Rhea

Epilogue: Rhea

Acknowledgments

About the Author

“Unapologetically vicious, with gorgeous, searing prose and a world that left me reeling. Rory Power has crafted my favorite kind of story, in which love and betrayal are one and the same.”Heather Walter, author of Malice

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

“Your new favourite book.” Cosmopolitan

“Wholly original and compelling.” Observer

“Body horror meets boarding school in a moving, terrifying thriller.” Guardian

“Power’s evocative, haunting, and occasionally gruesome debut will challenge readers to ignore its bewitching presence.” Booklist, Starred Review

“This gritty, lush debut chronicling psychological and environmental tipping points…weaves a chilling narrative that disrupts readers’ expectations through an expertly crafted, slow-burn reveal of the deadly consequences of climate change….Part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto, a staggering gut punch of a book.”Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“The perfect kind of story for our current era.” Hypable

“Wilder Girls is so sharp and packs so much emotion in such wise ways. I’m convinced we’re about to witness the emergence of a major new literary star” Jeff VanderMeer, author of the New York Times bestseller Annihilation

“The eeriness of Raxter Island permeates every scene, and Rory Power’s characters are fierce and honest, blazing from the pages. This is a groundbreaking speculative story—brutal and beautiful, raw and unflinching. I adored this book.” Emily Suvada, author of This Mortal Coil

“Wilder Girls is the bold, imaginative, emotionally wrenching horror novel of my dreams—one that celebrates the resilience of girls and the earthshaking power of their friendships. An eerie, unforgettable triumph.” Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn

“A feminist, LGBT+, sci-fi-horror story with all the tantalizing elements of gore, mystery, war, and love you can ask for. Real, flawed, brave girls against a world gone mad. A shudderingly good read!” Dawn Kurtagich, author of Teeth in the Mist

IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD

RORY POWER

TITANBOOKS

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In A Garden Burning Gold

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789096231

Paperback ISBN: 9781803360270

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789097337

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition April 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2022 Nike Power. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Για τον Παππού

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The fictional setting of In a Garden Burning Gold is inspired by various parts of the world, but it is not intended as a true representation of any one country or culture at any point in history.

[DRAMATIS PERSONAE]

* denotes deceased

Thyzakos

*Aya Ksiga - a Saint thought to have lived in the Ksigora

Vasilis Argyros - the Stratagiozi of Thyzakos, and father to Alexandros, Rhea, Nitsos, and Chrysanthi

*Irini Argyros - consort of Vasilis Argyros, and mother to Alexandros, Rhea, Nitsos, and Chrysanthi

Alexandros Argyros - the second to Vasilis Argyros, and Rhea’s twin brother.

Rhea Argyros - Thyspira, and Alexandros’s twin sister.

Nitsos Argyros - son to Vasilis Argyros.

Chrysanthi Argyros - daughter to Vasilis Argyros.

Yannis Laskaris - the Thyzak Steward of Ksigori

Evanthia Laskaris -consort to Yannis, mother to Michali

Michali Laskaris - son and heir of the Ksigoran steward

Kallistos Speros - son and heir of the Rhokeri steward

Giorgios Speros - the Thyzak Steward of Rhokera

Dimitra Markou - the Thyzak Steward of Myritsa

Lambros Kontopoulos - a suitor at Rhea’s winter choosing

Dimos Galanis - a suitor at Rhea’s winter choosing, and brother to Nikos

Nikos Galanis - a suitor at Rhea’s winter choosing, and brother to Dimos

Piros Zografi - a high-ranking member of the Sxoriza, and Amolovak refugee

Eleni Avramidis - a servant in the Argyros household

Flora Stamou - a servant in the Argyros household

Lefka - a horse

Trefazio

Tarro Domina - the Stratagiozi (called Stratagorra, in Trefzan) of Trefazio

Gino Domina - the second to Tarro Domina

Falka Domina - the second to Tarro Domina

*Luco Domina - the first Stratagiozi (called Stratagorra, in Trefzan)

Francisco Domina - cousin to Tarro

Carima Domina - daughter to Tarro

Marco Domina - son of Tarro

Merkher

Zita Devetsi - the Stratagiozi (called Ordukamat, in Merkheri) of Merkher

Stavra Devetsi - the second to Zita Devetsi

Chuzha

Nastia Rudenko - the Stratagiozi (called Toravosma, in Chuzhak) of Chuzha

Olek Rudenko - the second to Nastia

Amolova

Ammar Basha - the Stratagiozi (called Korabret, in Amolovak) of Amolova

Ohra Basha - the second to Ammar

Prevdjenn

Milad Karajic - the Stratagiozi (called Vosvidjar, in Prevdjenni) of Prevdjenn

Maryam Karajic - the second to Milad

CHAPTER ONE

RHEA

A week was too long to be a widow. Even after all her marriages, Rhea had never got used to it. The black, the singing, the veils—it was enough to drive anybody mad. At least no one ever expected her to cry.

She leaned forward in her seat as her carriage rattled up the road toward her father’s house, Stratathoma, where it was perched on the edge of a sheer black cliff. From here she could only see the thick perimeter wall and above it the peaks of the stone-shingled roof. Somewhere inside, past the courtyards and double doors, were her siblings. Of them all, Alexandros would be most glad to see her, and she him; it was always strange being separated from her twin, no matter how many times they parted. Nitsos, their younger brother, would have barely noticed her absence, tucked away as he was in his workshop from morning until night. And Chrysanthi would be excited to see her, if only for the stories Rhea brought back from her trips.

Little Chrysanthi—although, Rhea reminded herself, they were none of them so little anymore—gathered up the stories Rhea told about her consorts and kept them in a small tin box by the side of her bed. Sometimes, if Rhea listened closely during the night, she could hear Chrysanthi open the box and munch contentedly on a story or two, leaving crumbs strewn across her bedsheets. Well, she wouldn’t be disappointed this time. Rhea had a few stored up with just the right flavor. A flavor: a sweet, spicy autumn sort of crispness. Those were Chrysanthi’s favorites.

At last the carriage reached the double doors breaching Stratathoma’s perimeter wall, their gnarled surface painted a deep blue, the color most closely associated with their family name, Argyros. Rhea’s father was quite proud of their name and insisted that his children and his house bear his colors whenever possible. He was the country’s Stratagiozi, her father, in charge of all of Thyzakos, and as his children she and her siblings each had their own responsibilities to contend with. Only hers took her away from home, to some bed in some house in some city that fell under her father’s watch.

She had dawdled with this last consort. He’d made the inconvenient mistake of falling a bit in love with her, and Rhea had seen the flicker of it in his eyes and found herself somehow unable to slide her knife under his ribs, plagued by a thing she supposed she had to call guilt. It was only when the time was well past for a chill to dust across the high grasses and olive trees that she had managed, over their morning meal, to ask him to turn away from her and hold still. It had not been a clean death, and so not a clean season. It worked much better when she could get right to their hearts, as she would be sure to with her next consort—winter’s, to be chosen in a fortnight.

The carriage continued along the cobblestone path through the grounds and toward the outer courtyard, its studded wooden doors swinging back on their own, operated by a network of chains and gears. Nitsos’s design obviously. He was the middle child, slotted between the twins and Chrysanthi, and while Alexandros followed Baba like a shadow, Nitsos was left to while away the time in his workshop. Windup animals with steam-beating pulses, clockwork gardens full of fabric flowers. Tinkering with machines and mechanics to make sure everything operated smoothly, in every corner of the world.

Beyond the doors, the drive straightened out and the cobblestones turned to patchwork flagstone. Rhea pressed close to the carriage window to get a first glimpse of the doors into the private inner courtyard. They were too narrow for carriages, and the lintel hung too low to allow a single rider through. When you entered Baba’s house, you entered on your own feet, with no weapons in your hands and no ill will in your heart.

A pair of women were waiting, and as Rhea’s carriage came to a complete stop they darted forward, one to fetch the luggage strapped to the back of the carriage and the other to open Rhea’s door. But Rhea was too eager to get a breath of fresh air after so many hours bouncing around inside a small box. She shouldered the door fully open, the first servant jumping back to avoid its swing, and hopped down, her boots landing lightly on stones still warm from the afternoon sun.

The grass was well tended here, trimmed short, and the roses that trailed across every wall were fully in bloom, as always. Chrysanthi spent a great deal of time out here tending to the landscape, painting everything in careful strokes, making sure every rose was evenly pink.

“Kiria Rhea? Are you ready to go in?”

It was always startling to hear her true name for the first time after a marriage. In the rest of Thyzakos, and across the continent, they called her Thyspira, a title wrought by the first Stratagiozi that passed to whichever child had been given Rhea’s particular responsibilities.

She turned to see the two servants clutching her luggage, her bead-studded bags standing out against the plain cloth of their dresses. The taller of the two women looked unfamiliar, but Rhea recognized the other. Eleni, the sister of one of Rhea’s former consorts. Usually, Rhea only brought back a few gowns and trinkets from wherever her consorts lived, but five or six seasons ago she’d brought back Eleni. She couldn’t quite remember why, only that as she was leaving Eleni had knelt by the carriage and begged, no matter that her sister’s blood was still drying under Rhea’s fingernails.

They were women sometimes, Rhea’s consorts. It depended, of course, on the selection available. When afforded multiple options, Rhea found she had no particular preference. Lately, though, Thyzak families had been sending mostly sons, apparently judging them to be the most expendable. Frankly, based on her interactions with her own brothers, Rhea was inclined to agree, but it did make for a more boring choosing, both for her and for Chrysanthi, who usually had a bit of fun with the spares.

Rhea nodded to Eleni and the taller servant, and let the two of them walk slightly ahead of her. The servants’ dresses were gray and sweeping, high necklines draping into sleeves that hung loosely about their elbows. For the journey back from her consort’s house in Patrassa, Rhea had worn a traveling suit in mourning black, snug trousers and coat hidden under a stiff woolen cape. Now she thought longingly of the gowns waiting in her own closet. Gorgeous, vibrant things. Mosaics made fabric, structured shoulders smothered in scrolled embroidery. Red and blue and gold—blood colors, Baba called them.

The cobalt doors swung open, and Rhea sidled through the gap after her servants. In this inner courtyard, too, Chrysanthi’s hand was evident, but it was in an entirely different way. Baba preferred the outer courtyard to be orderly and regimented. Here, he let Chrysanthi do as she wished, and she had taken that to heart. More rosebushes, tendrils escaping up the walls and into every crevice, but other flowers, too. Spindly, wild little things, their tiny white buds gathering in lacelike lattices. In the corner, an olive tree stood proudly, its leaves a more vivid green than those growing in the family orchard. Opposite it, a fountain jutted from the wall, water burbling from the mouth of a stylized lion, and the water, too, was far richer in color than anything Rhea had seen elsewhere. The air itself was heavy with sun, gold splashed across every surface. Chrysanthi had exercised none of her usual restraint and let no shadows linger. Rhea could imagine her bent over the fountain, blending her paints on a little wooden palette before daubing at the crest of every ripple, gilding them with glimmer and shine.

“Enough dawdling,” came a voice from the far end of the courtyard, and Rhea looked up. Her twin brother, Alexandros—Lexos, for everyday—stood in the doorway to the main house, his blue coat unbuttoned, hands shoved firmly in its pockets. “I’m getting cold out here waiting for you.”

“What a hard life you live.” Rhea stepped around her servants and crossed to where Lexos was waiting. As she neared him, he held out his arms, and she let a smile snag at the corners of her mouth as she leaned into his embrace.

He smelled of salt and damp, of that musk all old houses got when their stones had sat for so long. Rhea breathed in deeply. It was not a good smell, particularly, but it was familiar. Consorts came and went, but Lexos was always the same.

“Where are the others?” she asked as he released her.

“Chrysanthi’s in the kitchen.”

“And Nitsos?”

“Where do you think?”

Nitsos’s workshop was in what, in another house, might’ve been the attic. Whenever Rhea visited him there, his worktables were barely visible under the debris his tinkering left behind: gears, finely wrought chains, all manner of pins and screws. Most of his creations were put to use about the house or incorporated into the natural order set working by Stratagiozis past—or if they were somewhat less useful, let loose into the gardens to wander about until their gears stuck.

“Let’s leave him be,” Rhea said, “and join Chrysanthi.”

They found her bent over the kitchen’s stone-slab table, a very long thin dowel in her hands as she carefully rolled out sheets of dough. She was a slight thing still, the air of a child clinging to her even though they had all left those days behind nearly a century prior. Rhea would never be able to look at her without seeing the rounded lines of youth laid over her.

Where Rhea and Lexos had been given the dark hair of their mother, Chrysanthi took after their father. All four siblings had straight Argyros noses and a slight downward turn at the corners of their dark blue eyes, but Chrysanthi’s hair was the same billowing gold as their father’s, her chin the same gentle point. They even walked the same way, with a caution in their steps that belied the steadiness Rhea knew they both felt. It seemed sometimes to Rhea that every one of her siblings had been gifted that steadiness but her. Lexos had his life here, his duties clearly laid out, and no matter how high Baba’s expectations rose it seemed he was always able to meet them. And Nitsos was so at home in his workshop, in the worn grooves of his life, that she doubted he ever felt anything but content. No, it was only Rhea who had to go out into the world, only Rhea who had to watch her consorts live and die the way she and her siblings never would.

She’d asked Lexos about it once, when she’d first realized how long the passing years were taking to register on her skin.

“Don’t be silly,” Lexos had said, sounding vaguely put out. “We’re not immortal. It’s just we haven’t died yet.”

That was the way with every Stratagiozi family. You went on until you didn’t. Early in her father’s reign, Rhea had seemed to age normally, but she looked much the same now as she had when she’d passed into adulthood some eighty years prior. In fact, she thought it might take her another hundred to get her first gray hair.

Chrysanthi looked up as they entered, and the dowel clattered to the ground as she darted around the table, eyes bright, cheeks flushed.

“Rhea!”

Where Lexos’s embrace had been a comfort, a moment of stillness in the rush of homecoming, Chrysanthi’s was like being shaken awake, with the warm press of her apron, still carrying heat from hours spent in front of the stove, and the tight squeeze of her arms as they banded around Rhea’s waist and lifted her an inch or two off the ground. Chrysanthi was taller than Rhea now, and Rhea never remembered until moments like this.

“Goodness,” Rhea said as she was lowered back to the ground. “It’s almost as if you never get any visitors.”

“You hardly count as a visitor,” Lexos said from behind her.

Chrysanthi frowned and began brushing off the front of Rhea’s jacket. “Sorry. I’ve got you covered in flour.”

“As long as you’re making something good, I don’t mind.” Rhea took Chrysanthi’s face in her hands and kissed both her cheeks. “How are you, koukla?”

Chrysanthi smiled beatifically. “Better now you’re back.”

There was nothing in the world, Rhea thought as she undid the clasps to her cape, quite like Chrysanthi’s smile. Nobody who held as much light at the heart of her.

“What are you making?” she asked, tossing her cape onto the bench built into the kitchen’s rock-slab walls and peeling off her coat.

“Pita, for dinner. I haven’t decided what to put in.”

“Let me help. I have some stories for you.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALEXANDROS

Lexos watched from the doorway as his sisters stood side by side, rolling out dough for the pita. Chrysanthi was chattering away, her hair catching in her mouth as she described her most recent project for Rhea—some special way the sea light hit the olive trees near midnight. He’d heard it before, had been dragged out of his bed to come and look, Lexos, come and see, but Rhea was always better at giving Chrysanthi the smiles and questions she wanted.

Usually, at least. Today he could see Rhea’s attention was elsewhere. She was doing her best to listen to Chrysanthi, but every few moments she glanced at the doorway, shoulders tight.

She was safe for the moment. Their father was out, making one of the trips Lexos wasn’t yet allowed to follow him on. He would be home before dinner, but with any luck they had another hour of peace.

Rhea and Chrysanthi had finished with a layer of dough and Rhea was carrying it to the end of the table, where the others were waiting. When she’d finished draping the sheet of dough over the rest, she reached for the bell hanging from the wall and rang it once, calling to a servant; one was always waiting nearby, whether Lexos could lay eyes on them or not.

“Someone will bring my bag,” she said loudly over her shoulder. “And then we can get started with the filling.”

Since they were small Rhea had been the best of them at collecting her words, cupping her hands together as she told a story and watching the seed of it crystallize in her palms. Their mother had taught all of them how, had called it a gift given exclusively to their family line, but of the four children Rhea was the only one who remembered the process.

Kymithi, they called the candies. Not biscuits and not fruit but somewhere in between. Rhea’s were all sugar and cloves, crisp on the outside with a soft middle. Lexos’s, when he tried, always came out tasting bitter. Sometimes, in the evenings when he was waiting for the stars to burn through the sky, he would try it again. But the kymithi always came out wrong.

Maybe, Lexos thought, Rhea had better luck because she actually had stories to tell. All Lexos could ever tell anyone was that he’d been to a meeting with Baba, and he couldn’t say very much more about it, and wasn’t that too bad.

Eleni ducked into the kitchen to put Rhea’s beaded bag on the counter, and left just as quickly, a harried look on her face. She was probably quite busy preparing with the other servants for Baba’s return. There was a sound from somewhere in the house, the scrape of furniture on the stone floor, and Lexos had to keep from flinching. Baba wasn’t due home just yet. There was time still.

“What was he like?” Chrysanthi was asking, and Lexos came farther into the room. He drew his coat tightly around him against the chill of the stone and settled onto a bench by the oven.

Rhea began to drop the kymithi, candied with maple sugar, into a ceramic bowl as Chrysanthi hung off her. Under her apron Chrysanthi’s yellow gown was an old castoff of Rhea’s. Rhea had embroidered the crimson swirls adorning the bodice a long time ago, back when she was still as young as she looked, and you could tell the stitchwork was unsteady if you looked closely. Rhea had tried to throw the dress out, but Chrysanthi had begged and begged until Rhea let her keep it.

His sisters. One lively and smiling, the other with a sharpness to her even as she led her consorts in their wedding dance. He would miss this when Rhea was gone again.

“He was nice enough,” Rhea was saying as she poured herself a cup of kaf, the rich, bitter drink Thyzaks favored at all hours of the day. “Brown hair, brown eyes.”

“But what kind of brown exactly?”

Lexos could see Rhea struggling not to laugh and got up, coming to lean against the kitchen table. “Horseshit brown,” he said, popping one of Rhea’s kymithi into his mouth.

“Ftama,” Chrysanthi said with a gasp, slapping Lexos on the shoulder, but Rhea snorted and let him steal another kymitha.

“How are they?” she asked.

Lexos bit down and closed his eyes, let the soft center of the kymitha melt on his tongue. It tasted of sweet bread and early morning wind sneaking through a slightly open bedroom window. He swallowed quickly—no need to for the rest of whatever scene Rhea had chosen.

“Good,” he said. “If perhaps a bit intimate.”

“Well, what did you expect? I have certain responsibilities.” Rhea picked through the bowl of kymithi to weed out a few of the undersized ones. They were small and round, each colored slightly differently but all with the same amber sheen. If Lexos looked closely, he could see something flickering at the center of each one.

“You’re so lucky,” Chrysanthi said with a sigh. Lexos wandered around to the other side of the table. He’d heard this a thousand times before, and would likely hear it as many times again. “Why couldn’t I have been Thyspira?”

Long ago, Lexos had wished for Rhea’s freedom himself—the lure of the world, the attention, the flowers tossed before your feet—but it had only taken a few trips across Thyzakos with his father to convince him otherwise. Chrysanthi might not realize, but she was lucky to stay at home, wrapped up in her work, in the simplicity of painting a brighter sunlit green onto a single leaf in the garden and trusting that miles away, beyond the walls of Stratathoma and the borders of Thyzakos, a thousand other leaves were beginning to brighten, too.

“Privileges of the eldest, koukla,” Rhea said absently as she began to lay the sheets of dough at the bottom of a baking dish.

Privileges of the eldest, indeed. Lexos had a few of his own that he would rather not think about.

“Do you think we should fetch Nitsos?” Chrysanthi turned to Lexos. “I don’t like to think of him up there alone.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. We’ll take dinner together, after all.”

It was true that Nitsos almost certainly preferred to spend his time alone, tucked away in his attic workshop, but Lexos was more concerned with avoiding the workshop himself. There was something about the mechanical tick of everything there, the life that Nitsos could knit out of gears and screws, that made Lexos uneasy. He’d tried, when they were younger, to learn about it, spent days up in the workshop with Nitsos trying look impressed as his brother described how every change he made to one of his creations would ripple out into the natural order of the continent. But his discomfort had never faded. Perhaps it was the artifice of it, though he’d never use that word with Nitsos, that made him anxious.

Their gifts had come to them from Baba, as was true for every Stratagiozi and their children. A Stratagiozi’s power could be split apart, untangled and pulled free like strands from a braid. And so, as his children reached whatever he deemed the appropriate age, Vasilis Argyros would cut his palms and mix his blood with the earth. With very little ceremony, he’d press the resulting grime into his children’s left palms, darkening the specific lines and whorls in the skin there that corresponded to the particular gift he was giving. They each still bore those marks, vivid and black.

For Lexos, it had started with the stars. The job had belonged first to Baba, but one evening, just after Lexos grew tall enough to see over the veranda walls, Baba took him to the observatory, the highest room in the house, and unlocked a wooden cupboard that Lexos had never seen before, its doors carved with a series of overlapping circles. From the inner shelves spilled a piece of fabric so slippery Lexos could barely feel it, so deep a blue it nearly matched the Argyros family color. It was small enough to gather up in his arms, and yet when he tried to find the edge it was always just out of reach.

“Sit down,” Baba had said, gesturing to the window, where a cushioned seat was built into the sill.

Carrying the fabric was like trying to grab hold of water, but Lexos managed it, clutching tightly to one handful and letting the rest flow where it would. From his seat he watched his father reach into a small compartment at the back of the cupboard and take out a spool of diamond-white thread and a long, glinting needle.

“Remember your lessons,” Baba said, handing them to Lexos. “What will you put where? Think.”

That was the first night Lexos stitched the stars into the sky. Every night after, he climbed the stairs up to the observatory, opened the cupboard, and found the night’s fabric waiting there for him, the previous night’s stars gone, no sign of stitching remaining. Every night after, he pricked at his fingers and bit at his lip as he laid out the constellations, careful to keep the alignment just right.

After a few years, and when Lexos was tall enough to mount his horse without a groom giving him a leg up, Baba told him to stitch in the moon, as well. It was longer work, with more detail to it, but Lexos liked the look of the fabric when he was done. There was a wholeness to it, as though he should have been doing it that way all along.

With the moon came the tides, and with them came a large basin set on a pedestal in the observatory, full of water always moving, the patterns shifting as Lexos learned to dip his fingers in and coax them this way and that. Once he had mastered the tides, had learned to keep them wild and impassable around the cliffs of Stratathoma, he earned yet another visit from Baba, this time to tell Lexos that as the oldest Argyros child, he was to attend every Stratagiozi meeting with his father and observe. There were other Stratagiozis, of course, one ruling over each of the neighboring countries, and every season they met to discuss the state of their federation, and to politely wrest what power and resources they could from one another.

“I never had a chance to learn like this,” Baba had said. “So count yourself lucky and make good use of it.”

The meetings were always in the same place—a monastery north of Thyzakos, perched on the top of a mammoth spike of stone. The only way to get there was to use a system of baskets and pulleys. A rope stretched from the nearby mountainside across the valley to where the monastery sat precariously, its verandas cantilevered out over the edge of the rock. Hanging from the rope were large woven baskets, big enough to hold a man and not much else. To get to the monastery, one climbed inside, weapons left behind, and used the rope overhead to pull the basket along to the other side, where the monks were waiting with glasses of just-poured wine.

His first trip across the valley had left Lexos nauseated, but now, after more trips than he could count, it felt like nothing to haul himself out over open air. At least for those few minutes his life was in his own hands.

“Elado, Lexos,” someone said, and he jumped. There were his sisters, each with their hands on their hips, watching him. Rhea was closest—it had been her voice.

“Sorry,” he said, giving her his best smile, and Chrysanthi returned to filling the pita with kymithi, but Rhea didn’t seem convinced.

“What is it?” she asked. “Has Baba decided—”

“No,” he said quickly. “I’d have told you. You know that.”

She was asking about her next choosing, the ceremony by which Rhea would select her consort for the coming winter. Long ago, when Baba’s seat had been more secure, they’d been dull affairs. Now, with relations in Thyzakos at their most fragile, Baba always had something to say about who Rhea would choose, and given the mistakes she’d made in Patrassa, Lexos thought she was right to be nervous.

He busied himself with searching through his coat for the pocket watch Nitsos had made him, ticking hands pointing to the phases of the moon as they changed, the face of the watch showing the constellations in their current arrangement. Not that he ever forgot, but it was a nice gesture from a brother Lexos wasn’t sure he had ever seen as clearly as, say, Rhea, who had not let up and was in fact standing closer than she had been before.

“I’m expecting word from my network,” he said, relenting. “There have been some rumblings in the east I’m not comfortable with.”

“The unrest? I heard something about a skirmish between Rhokera and another city.”

“If that were the only problem, we might have nothing to worry about.” Lexos stood up abruptly, mouth going dry as he thought about the reports he’d received from the north—separatist camps, filled both with hatred for the Stratagiozi and with people from every corner of Thyzakos, and other countries besides. “We had better not talk about it now.”

There was a clatter as Chrysanthi opened the oven to check the temperature, and Lexos felt Rhea come up next to him. They watched Chrysanthi put the finishing touches on the pita, tucking the last top layer in at the sides and crimping the seam delicately.

“Do you need help, koukla?” Rhea asked. Lexos nudged her in the ribs. Rhea had never quite managed to break the habit of looking after Chrysanthi, even though the two were apart so often.

“No, it’s fine. It won’t need long,” Chrysanthi said. “Should we change for dinner, do you think?”

Lexos plucked at Rhea’s sleeve, the stiff starched fabric wrinkled from hours in the carriage. “He won’t like to see you in this.” Nobody had to ask who he meant.

“Oh, come get dressed in my room,” Chrysanthi said, beaming. “You can help me choose what to wear. Like when we were little.”

Before their mother died, before Baba set his sights on the Stratagiozi title. More than a hundred years ago now.

“You go up,” Rhea said. “I’ll be right there.”

Leaving the pita in the oven—one of the servants would be in to finish the meal—Chrysanthi pressed a kiss to each of her siblings’ cheeks and ducked through the low kitchen doorway, heading for the back staircase that led to the second floor without passing Baba’s room.

At last, quiet. Lexos hadn’t words to express how dear Chrysanthi was to him, but sometimes a bit of peace was even dearer.

“She’s tall,” Rhea murmured. She was still watching the doorway, one hand idly pressed to her heart.

Lexos slumped back down on the bench. “She’s only just taller than you. Isn’t that one of your old dresses she’s wearing?”

“She must have altered it.” Rhea sat down beside him, a grimace on her face as she tucked her legs up under her.

“Sore?”

“I never remember to get out and stretch.”

She’d come from Patrassa, a good two days south. Lexos had been there only once, to visit the seaside with their mother when she’d been ill.

Away from the oven, it was cold here in the kitchen. At last, weather fitting the season. For weeks, Lexos had watched as the leaves refused to fall, as the long grasses and flowering trees continued to be untouched by frost. Every day Baba’s temper had grown shorter, and Lexos thought of Rhea in some strange house, panic bubbling as she found herself unable, and still unable, to end her consort’s life.

It had gone on so long that even Nitsos had noticed. He’d come down from his workshop one afternoon and found Lexos in the courtyard, sunning himself on the baking flagstones.

“She’s running out of time,” Nitsos had said, squinting up at the sky.

“Don’t worry,” Lexos replied. “If she needs help, she’ll ask for it.”

Except she wouldn’t, of course. But Lexos thought he might be the only person who knew that.

Rhea sighed and rested her head on his shoulder, and he felt her relax, her hands uncurling from their fists. Her nails were bitten to the quick, the skin around them pink and inflamed.

“You did your job in the end,” he said quietly. “He can’t ask for more than that.”

“He can ask me to do it well, can’t he?”

“Hush.” Lexos covered her hands with one of his. “Let him say that, not you.” They were quiet for a moment, and Lexos eased himself away from Rhea to get a good look at her face. He’d wanted to ask, and now seemed like the only time they might have. “What was it anyway? That kept you?”

Rhea was, he knew, an excellent liar to most people. She had to be, given what she did outside the walls of Stratathoma. But inside them, and with him, the slight drop of her expression was all too clear. She had not wanted him to ask. But better him than their father.

“I couldn’t quite say,” she told him, and oddly enough, she seemed to be telling the truth. She looked down, frowning. “Do you wonder, ever? About the worth of things?”

That, Lexos thought, was a dangerous road to travel, especially when their father was involved. “What things in particular?”

Rhea let out a little laugh, and leaned her head on his shoulder again. “Lives, I suppose.”

“Oh, is that all?”

She waved him off. “Never mind. Call it a lapse in judgment, and let’s speak no more about it.” At the edges of the house a door slammed and the ease between them disappeared as Rhea jerked upright. “He’s early.”

“Calm down, kathroula.” Lexos had called her that since they’d learned to speak. Mirror, it meant. Rhea had never answered in kind, and Lexos had always privately thought it was because Rhea was complete without him in a way he was not without her.

“I should’ve changed earlier,” Rhea was saying as she snatched her coat and cape up from the couch. “This will only remind him.”

“No time now, I’m afraid. He’ll have seen your carriage out front.”

On the floors above, they could hear the scurrying of servants hastening to make last-minute adjustments, and back toward the great room there was the sound of the outer doors closing.

Lexos stood and smoothed his hair down. His shirt was still tucked into his dark, narrow trousers, but there were creases and the collar was folded oddly. He adjusted his coat, hoped it would do something to hide his unkemptness. Rhea, meanwhile, had put the rest of her traveling suit back on and was fussing with her long braid, which was coming loose at the end.

“Leave it,” he said as heavy footsteps came echoing down the long hallway to the kitchen. “Better for him to see it like that than see you trying to fix it.”

Lexos had the clearer view of the hallway, and so it was he who first saw the silhouette of their father as he strode toward them. He was a tall man—his height had been passed down to each of his children—with slender shoulders and a tilt to his whole body, as if he’d once been knocked off balance and had never quite found his footing again.

It was difficult, sometimes, to remember that to anybody else this man wasn’t Baba, but Vasilis Argyros, Stratagiozi of Thyzakos. His title could hardly carry half as much weight to others as “Baba” did to his children. But being Stratagiozi meant something very important to everyone outside Stratathoma’s walls: Besides identifying Baba as the country’s ruler, it also meant that Baba bore a matagios, a small black dot in the middle of his tongue, and with his particular matagios came death, and the power to hand it out to whomever Baba so chose.

“So,” said Baba, stepping into the kitchen. His voice was low, seeming to echo around the hewn stone room. “She returns.”

Rhea nodded, barely. “I always do.”

There was a moment of quiet as Baba took in the flour-coated counters and the matching white stains still lingering on Rhea’s trousers. At last, his gaze settled on Lexos.

“Alexandros. I suppose you didn’t have anything else to occupy your time?”

It was always worse when Baba was right. Lexos did have other things he should’ve been doing, rather than eating sweets and watching his sisters bake. There were documents to read, letters to sum up for Baba, maps to practice drawing freehand.

He said nothing. An apology would do no good. And besides, he wasn’t the least bit sorry.

“Well, while you’re both here,” Baba said slowly, “we can discuss your sister’s recent mismanagement in Patrassa.”

Lexos saw the color drain from his sister’s face, as quickly as if Chrysanthi had taken her paints and brushes to Rhea’s skin.

“I know there was a delay,” she said, but that was all she got out before Baba raised one weathered hand and her mouth snapped shut.

“You had your marker?” A set of dials from Nitsos, like Lexos’s pocket watch, that ticked off the days left until the time for the season was over and done.

“Yes,” Rhea said.

“And you knew your responsibilities?”

“Yes.”

“And you understand what happens?” Baba stepped closer, his hands clasped behind his back, black coat near the twin of Rhea’s save for the gold embroidery weaving down the front. “When the season does not change as it should, as it always has. When people cannot count on us.”

“I do.”

“Tell me.”

They all went like this, these conversations, if they could be called that, when Rhea came home. Even when the seasons changed smoothly she was given a reminder of what could be lost if they didn’t.

“Say it,” Baba repeated when Rhea remained silent. “What happens when you can’t do your job?”

“People begin to doubt.”

“Doubt what?” said Baba. “Be specific, kora.”

“They start to doubt your power. They start to wonder if somebody else should sit in your chair.”

“And?”

Crimson spots were flaring on her cheeks. Lexos held his tongue, resisted the urge to take her hand and remind her she was not alone.

“And everything is at risk,” she said.

“That’s right.” Baba glanced at Lexos, to make sure he was watching. “Everything. Our house, our lives, our country. At risk because of you. Tell me.”

“Everything at risk because of me.”

Rhea had said it so often that Lexos half expected to hear her muttering it in her sleep sometimes when he passed her room in the night on his way to stitch the sky.

“I’m glad you understand,” Baba said, eyes soft. “And you’ll do better with your winter choosing, yes? You know how much rests on your conduct, yes?” The silence he let stretch on was painful. Lexos forced himself to keep still. “All right. Give your baba a kiss.”

Relief melted Rhea’s features, and she let out a nervous laugh as she kissed Baba’s cheek. Baba didn’t give her much back, just a hint of a smile, but it was more than he usually allowed, and Lexos could see a spark light in Rhea’s eyes.

He looked away, dried his clammy palms on his trousers. In his earliest days at Stratathoma, he’d been afraid the markings on his palm would wipe away, but they were part of him now, imprinted into his skin.

“Why don’t you go and change?” he heard Baba say to Rhea. “You know I don’t like to see you in black.”

“Of course.”

Rhea gave their father one last anxious smile and darted between him and Lexos, avoiding Lexos’s eye. She knew how he felt about these conversations, how he felt about the way Baba spoke to her, but she didn’t seem to mind it as he did. It was the only thing they ever truly argued about.

“How was your trip?” Lexos said as soon as Rhea was gone from the kitchen, eager to scrub her from their father’s mind.

“Too long,” said Baba. He’d gone to Rhokera, ostensibly to visit the steward, but Lexos knew it had really been to remind the people there who they owed their allegiance to. Lately the Rhokeri had been reaching for more power than they were owed, and Baba could not bear it. “We’ll speak more after dinner.” He glanced at the counter, at the mess left behind. “Where is Chrysanthi?”

“Upstairs. She’ll be down soon, I think.”

“She’s well, I trust?”

“She is.” Lexos swallowed. “You might ask her yourself.”

Baba ignored him and swept by, making for the doorway. Lexos knew it was useless, but he said it anyway: “Nitsos is well, too.”

Baba stopped and looked blankly over his shoulder. “I’m sure he is.”

When he was gone, Lexos dropped onto the bench and buried his face in his hands. If only Rhea could be like Nitsos, Nitsos who knew his father’s heart and had walled himself off from it. Instead she let Baba hurt her and insisted, at the same time, that he had done no such thing. And it was left to Lexos, then, to open her eyes, to show her the scars on her skin. Not a job he’d ever asked for, and not a job anybody wanted him to do.

It was quiet here, at least, and the air was starting to warm from the oven. He’d stay awhile, soak in a few minutes of rest before dinner. After all, he was sure he’d need it.

CHAPTER THREE

RHEA

Rhea emerged from the mouth of the kitchen hallway into the great room, blinking at the sudden sunlight tumbling through the high windows. Above, across the whole of the ceiling, was a tiled mural of her father, and his fathers before him, all rendered as traditional icons. Wide, down-turned eyes and interlaced hands, and behind their heads a circle of rich blue. Rhea had spent a hundred years under these faces. She could still remember the workers perched on the scaffolding, scraping plaster across the ceiling while Chrysanthi brushed over the tiles with her paints to make sure they would always catch the light.

Waiting for her by the hearth were Eleni and her other servant. They didn’t follow her everywhere—Rhea was very particular about that—but she would need them to help her dress for dinner. She motioned to Eleni as she approached, and they fell in behind her as they made for the back staircase.

Up and up, on steps worn smooth. Somewhere below, Lexos was probably still talking to Baba. Discussing the spreading unrest, discussing the ramifications of her inexplicable incompetence. It was shameful enough to have to face her father, but she knew Lexos was probably making his own judgments about her, even if he’d never say so. He knew what it meant when she couldn’t do her job, what it might cost them. And though he never said a thing, there was always a look about him after these conversations with Baba. A pity, almost, and a frustration.

They reached the second floor of the house and turned down another corridor, this one lined with a shaggy, red rug. Rhea could remember mornings when she was small, the rug soft on her bare feet as she paced in front of Lexos’s door and waited for him to wake up.

They passed Nitsos’s room first, probably locked up tight, and as they reached Chrysanthi’s, Rhea rapped sharply on the door and kept going. Chrysanthi would find Rhea when she was ready.

Then came Lexos’s room. It was opposite hers, facing the sea, and as she hesitated by the door, just slightly ajar, she caught a lungful of salt air. No matter how cold it left the room, Lexos always kept the shutters open. He said it helped him sleep.

And finally, her own chamber. She and Lexos had got the first pick of bedrooms, and she’d chosen this one, with its view facing back to the mountains. The autumn had stripped the leaves from the trees clustered in the foothills, and had left the slopes scrubbed, the wildflowers curling and browning as though burned.

Stratathoma had originally been built many centuries ago, by the first Stratagiozi of Thyzakos, and its style was rooted firmly in simplicity and spareness. Its bedrooms were equipped only with broad wooden window seats, deep enough for two people to lie close together. Each seat was topped with a cushion barely three inches thick, its cover made of patterned wool that scratched horribly if you left too much skin uncovered while sleeping.

The rest of the room was fairly empty, save for a small table with two matching chairs and a freestanding wardrobe tucked along one wall. That held her clothes—gowns, shoes, coats and capes, and traveling suits like the one she still wore.

Rhea had scarcely taken two steps into the room when Chrysanthi burst in behind her, hair only half pinned up, dinner gown unbuttoned and flapping open at the back.

“How was it?” Chrysanthi asked. “Was Baba terribly angry?”

Rhea motioned to Eleni, who sidled in behind Chrysanthi and began dutifully doing up her buttons. Chrysanthi had changed from Rhea’s castoff into a fresh green gown with an explosion of pleats cascading down to form the skirt, and she’d piled on a handful of beaded necklaces the way she always had, even as children playing in their late mother’s closet.

“I wouldn’t say angry,” Rhea answered. “Your hair, koukla. What a mess.”

“Eleni can do it.”

“Fine. You sit still,” she said, “while I find something to wear.”

Rhea’s other maid—Flora, that was her name—began to undo Rhea’s braid, working a comb through the tangles her day of travel had left there, as Rhea opened the wardrobe and picked through the dresses hanging there.

“You’re in green,” Rhea said. “I suppose I might wear red. We’ll look like a poppy field, but there are worse things.”

In a few minutes, Eleni had Chrysanthi’s yellow hair tucked up into a looped knot, and Flora was draping a beaded chain across Rhea’s forehead, weaving it back into her dark curls. Rhea had wiggled into a rich red gown, its fabric and silhouette simple until the broad sweep of the skirts, which were embroidered with gold.

“I’ve never understood this,” Chrysanthi muttered. “It’s not as though we’re trying to impress anybody.”

“Just Baba,” Rhea said, meeting Chrysanthi’s eyes in the mirror. She’d missed it, the preparing. Her late consort’s family had dressed simply, in pale colors and rough fabrics. Nothing like the armor Rhea was strapping onto her body now.

At last Flora finished with her hair and knelt to pull off the traveling boots that Rhea still wore. They were placed carefully in the wardrobe as Rhea slid her feet into a pair of thin slippers and brushed past Chrysanthi on the way to the door.

“Wait, where are you going? It isn’t time yet.”

“To fetch Nitsos.” She couldn’t sit around here waiting for Baba to call them down. She’d go mad thinking over everything she’d done wrong with her consort. All the ways she could’ve been better.

Down the hallway, then, and back out to the staircase. The only way to get to the attic was through an access door at the top of the bell tower, which was in fact empty of any bell. One had hung here once, long ago, to be run in times of strife, but when Baba had taken Stratathoma, he’d had it removed. A symbolic gesture, he said, that there would be no more strife in Thyzakos. Rhea wasn’t sure if it hadn’t been a bit silly.

She hauled her skirts up to her knees as she began the climb up to the top of the tower. As she reached the final landing, she paused for a moment to take in the view. Mountains and sea stitched together, and if she turned, the country spreading out, farmland and forest. Most of the time, when Baba lectured her about sacrifice and patriotism, she didn’t quite understand that bone-deep love he spoke of for land and people. It was as if talking about it made it shrivel up in her chest and hide away. But here, wind cold against her cheeks, Rhea felt her heart open wide. There was blood in this soil. Some of it was blood she’d spilled, yes, but some, too, was her own.

The doorway to the attic was off to the left, a low, curving thing, and from there, another flight of stairs, and another, until at last Rhea was at the very top of the house, higher even than Lexos’s observatory. She knocked on the wall as she climbed the last few steps; there was no door to Nitsos’s workshop, and they had all learned long ago not to surprise him. You never knew what he might be working on.

“Te elama,” Nitsos called, and Rhea took the last step up into the workshop.

In here it was always bright like summer, light rioting through the air, sent ricocheting by the mirrored ceiling. Rhea ducked as a mechanical beetle came whizzing past her head on one leg of its predetermined pattern, and stepped around a small mechanical rose in mid-bloom to greet her brother.

He was still in his leather apron, and his round, ruddy face was smudged with what looked like oil. Rhea could see an indent on his nose from where he’d perched his magnifying glasses, which now lay on the table before him.

“You’re back,” he said.

Rhea trailed her hand along the edge of the worktable, smiling to herself as Nitsos grimaced when her fingers brushed an incomplete bit of machinery. “Indeed.”

“And dressed for dinner.”

“Ah, your sharp inventor’s eye at work.”

“Quite,” Nitsos said dryly, and reached to untie his apron. Rhea waited for him to snatch up a jacket from somewhere, or at the very least wipe his hands on the kerchief in his pocket, but Nitsos just folded his apron and came around the table, heading for the stairs in his stained trousers and work shirt.

“You’re going like that?”

He stopped and turned, glancing at the ceiling to get a look at his reflection. “Like what?”

“You have grease all over your face.” Rhea sighed. “Come here.”

Nitsos frowned but let Rhea shake out his kerchief (also dirty, she noted unhappily) and spit in it.

“It’s as if you’re baiting him,” she said, taking the kerchief to his face and scrubbing at the streaks of black there. “You know Baba likes things a certain way.”

Nitsos squirmed as Rhea rubbed particularly fiercely at a stubborn smudge. “Maybe with you, and maybe with Lexos, but he wouldn’t notice with me.”

“You’re already testing him.” She plucked at the waistband of his trousers. “So let’s aim to be tidy at least from the chin up.”

She’d barely finished when there came the distant sound of the kitchen bell being rung for dinner. They were due in the dining room as quickly as possible. But Rhea found herself lingering, looking around at the various creatures Nitsos was in the middle of. What animals and plants he made here would serve as symbols for their living counterparts in the world beyond, and any changes or manipulations would take effect across the continent.

It was, in essence, much the same sort of process as the rest of the family’s gifts, but theirs had been given to them young, whereas, to Nitsos’s great frustration, he’d had to wait until even Chrysanthi had got hers first. And when Baba had finally decided he was ready, it had been this he was allowed: not the creation of natural order, but only the mechanical care and maintenance of it. He could still build whatever creatures he liked inside the confines of Stratathoma, but in accordance with the parameters set on his power by Baba, his machines held none of the bearing on the world beyond Stratathoma that the others did, those built by some other Stratagiozi’s child centuries prior. What true importance was left to such a job nobody could quite discern, but what they did understand was that Baba meant for Nitsos to be as far removed from the management of the country as possible.

Whatever it was that made Nitsos’s presence so distasteful to Baba was something Rhea couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was that he looked the most like what Rhea remembered of their mother, despite his blond hair. Perhaps it was that he was too young, by Stratagiozi standards, to be of much use, although Chrysanthi had never suffered in equal measure.

As it was, Nitsos had taken Baba’s tossed-aside gift and welcomed it, exploring and inventing with a vigor that Rhea pretended not to be alarmed by. It might not have left her so uncomfortable if their gifts had been more matched, but where Nitsos was particularly concerned with the inner workings of things, Rhea preferred to give that as little consideration as possible.

Her siblings dealt in symbols of clockwork, of paint and cloth. She was the only one who ever had to confront the real, beating heart of the world. Time passed as it would—managing all that was the domain of some other Stratagiozi, although nobody had ever told her who—but it was Rhea who nudged the seasons along with it. Each one began as she chose her suitor, the next instance of which was looming on the horizon, and ended as her suitor died.

Died, she supposed, was a vague way of putting it, but the alternative was too distasteful to think about just before dinner.

She and Nitsos met Chrysanthi and Lexos on the way to the dining room. Rhea felt something flip in her stomach at the sight of all three of her siblings together again. Of course, Nitsos looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else, and Chrysanthi was still asking all about her last consort. She exchanged a weary smile with Lexos, and led the way through the double doors into the dining room.

It was set on the back side of the house, with a series of windows cut into the wall that looked out over the ocean. In winter the servants boarded them up with brightly decorated shutters, but it was warm enough still that they stood empty, the sea air sweeping through. At one end of the room, a fire burned steadily in the hearth, and across the center stood a long stone table, so roughly hewn that its surface could only just be considered flat.

Baba wasn’t there yet, which sent a frisson of relief skittering down Rhea’s spine, so they took their places, Lexos and Rhea on one side of the table, Nitsos and Chrysanthi on the other. Baba always sat at the head, and at the foot there was a place setting for their mother, even though she had died a few short months before they came to Stratathoma.

“At last,” came Baba’s booming voice, and the double doors banged open. Baba swept in, followed by two scurrying servants, one carrying a pitcher of wine and the other a tray of glasses. “My children.”

He had changed out of the black coat Rhea had last seen him in and put on one that brushed the floor, red and black patterning running across it in stripes. On his fingers were a smattering of rings, and he smelled different, too, the leather and dust of travel covered over in spice and amber.

He paused at his chair for a moment, gaze passing from one sibling to the next until at last he gestured for them to sit. Rhea sank down, smiling tightly at the servant who came to fill her glass.

“So.” Baba took a long sip from his and dabbed at his mouth with the corner of his sleeve. “Which of my children will speak first?”

Chrysanthi opened her mouth—of course, Rhea thought fondly—but closed it as Lexos shifted, probably giving her a kick under the table. No, Baba knew who he wanted to hear from, and it was Rhea. She sat up a bit straighter and cleared her throat before she began.