I slept the whole evening and night and woke in the early hours of the morning: still tired but my head less thick, and my lightning-scorched palms felt cool to the touch again. Magic ran whispering and slow over rocks, deep inside me. Kasia was sleeping on the rug at the foot of the bed; through the bedcurtains I could see the princess with the two children gathered close to her. There were two guards drowsing on either side of the door.

Alosha was sitting up in a chair by the fire with the hungry sword on her lap, sharpening it with her finger. I could feel the whisper of her magic as she ran the pad of her thumb near the edge of the blade. A thin line of blood welled up on her dark skin, even though she wasn’t actually touching the steel, and it lifted in a faint red mist to sink into the blade. Her chair was turned to have full view of the doors and windows, as though she’d been watching all night.

“What do you fear?” I asked her, softly.

“Everything,” she said. “Anything. Corruption in the palace—the king dead, Ballo dead, the crown prince lured off to a battlefield where anything might happen. It’s late enough to start being cautious. I can miss a few nights’ sleep. Are you better?” I nodded. “Good. Listen to me: we need to root out this corruption in the palace, and quickly. I don’t believe we made an end of it when we destroyed that book.”

I sat up and hugged my knees. “Sarkan thought it might be the queen after all. That she might have been—tortured into helping, instead of corrupted.” I wondered if he was right: if the queen had smuggled out a small golden fruit somehow, plucked up off the ground in the Wood, and now in some dark corner of the palace gardens a thin silver sapling had broken the earth, scattering corruption all around. It was hard for me to imagine the queen so lost to everything she’d been that she would bring the Wood with her, that she’d turn it on her own family and kingdom.

But Alosha said, “She might not have needed much torment to help see her husband dead, after he abandoned her for twenty years in the Wood. And perhaps her elder son, too,” she added, as I flinched in protest. “I notice Marek is the one she kept back from the front. In any case, it’s safe enough to say she’s at the center of what’s happening. Can you put this Summoning of yours on her?”

I was silent. I remembered the throne room, where I’d thought of casting the Summoning on the queen. Instead I’d chosen to give the court an illusion, a theatrical, to win Kasia’s pardon. Maybe that had been the mistake, after all.

“But I don’t think I can do it alone,” I said. I had a feeling the Summoning wasn’t really meant to be cast alone: as if truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen.

Alosha shook her head. “I can’t help you. I won’t leave the princess and the royal children unguarded until I see them safely to Gidna.”

Reluctantly I said, “Solya might help me.” The last thing I wanted was to cast a spell with him, and give him any more reasons to keep grasping at my magic, but maybe his sight would make the spell stronger.

“Solya.” Alosha loaded his name with disapproval. “Well, he’s been a fool, but he’s not stupid. You may as well try him. If not, go to Ragostok. He’s not as strong as Solya, but he might be able to manage it.”

“Will he help me?” I said doubtfully, remembering the circlet on the queen’s head. He hadn’t liked me much, either.

“When I say so, he will,” Alosha said. “He’s my great-great-grandson; if he argues, tell him to come speak to me. Yes, I know he’s an ass,” she added, misunderstanding my stare, and sighed. “The only child of my line to show magic, at least in Polnya.” She shook her head. “It’s cropped up in my favorite granddaughter’s children and grandchildren, but she married a man from Venezia and went south with him. It would take more than a month to send for one of them.”

“Do you have much family left, besides them?” I asked timidly.

“Oh, I have—sixty-seven great-great grandchildren, I think?” she said after a moment’s thought. “Perhaps more by now; they drift away little by little. A few of them write to me dutifully every Midwinter. Most of them don’t remember that they’re descended from me, if they ever knew. Their skin has a little tea mixed in with the milk, but it only keeps them from burning in the sun, and my husband is a hundred and forty years dead.” She said it easily, as if it didn’t matter anymore; I suppose it didn’t.

“And that’s all?” I said. I felt almost desperate. Great-great-grandchildren, half of them lost and the rest of them so distant that she could sigh over Ragostok, and feel nothing more than a mild irritation. They didn’t seem enough to keep her rooted to the world.

“I didn’t have any other kin to begin with. My mother was a slave from Namib, but she died having me, so that’s all I know of her. A baron in the south bought her from a Mondrian trader to give his wife consequence. They were kind enough to me, even before my gift came out, but it was the kindness of masters: they weren’t kin.” She shrugged. “I’ve had lovers now and then, mostly soldiers. But once you’re old enough, they’re like flowers: you know the bloom will fade even as you put them in the glass.”

I couldn’t help bursting out, “Then why—be here at all? Why do you care about Polnya, or—or anything?”

“I’m not dead,” Alosha said tartly. “And I’ve always cared about good work. Polnya’s had a line of good kings. They’ve served their people, built libraries and roads, raised up the University, and been good enough at war to keep their enemies from overrunning them and smashing everything. They’ve been worthy tools. I might leave, if they grew wicked and bad; I certainly wouldn’t put swords in men’s hands to follow that damned hothead Marek into a dozen wars for glory. But Sigmund—he’s a sensible man, and good to his wife. I’m glad enough to help him hold up the walls.”

She saw the misery on my face, and with rough kindness added, “You learn to feel it less, child; or you learn to love other things. Like poor Ballo,” she said, with a kind of dusty, wistful regret, not strong enough to call grief. “He lived for forty years in a monastery illuminating manuscripts before anyone noticed he wasn’t growing older. He was always a little surprised to find himself a wizard, I think.”