“What are you wearing?” she asked, frowning at Asherton’s coat.
“Whatever I please. When is supper?”
“Supper is in an hour. Go and change—and no, you can’t take the baby with you. Return him to the nurse.”
“You should carry him sometimes, Mother,” Asherton said, giving the baby back to the nurse. “He isn’t heavy.”
Magdala placed her hand on his back and tried to guide him toward the stairs, but as they mounted the steps, two women passed them. One was a tall, broad-shouldered woman in her late thirties with white-blonde hair and a wide, toothy smile. Behind her came a smaller woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with dark hair and sad eyes. She wore an aconite-purple dress embroidered with white sunbirds.
The younger woman raised her eyes and they rested on Asherton. She stumbled, nearly falling down the steps. Her sister caught her arm and steadied her.
“Where did you get that jacket?” she asked, jerking toward Asherton.
Startled, Asherton paused. “Why?”
The woman’s face washed a grayish pallor. “You can’t have that. Where did you get it?”
She moved toward him, her arm outstretched like she meant to seize the coat, but Magdala stepped between them. “Do not touch him.”
The taller woman’s eyes widened in panic. “What are you doing, sister?”
“I just … I don’t understand.” The young woman looked between Asherton and her sister—bewildered, almost frantic. “How did you get it?”
“It was my brother’s,” Asherton said cautiously.
“No, no, he didn’t have a brother. He never once mentioned a brother …” Her chest rose and fell rapidly; she seemed like she was about to spiral into a panic.
The older woman gripped her shoulders. “My dear, there are a lot of leather jackets in the world,” she hissed.
“Not like that one.” The young woman’s voice was low and hoarse. “I know that one. But he wasn’t wearing it when he died; it was left on the battlefield. I’ve been looking for it …”
“It’s not the same jacket, my dear,” the older woman said through smiling teeth. “You’re tired from the journey. You’re imagining things.”
“Who was your brother?” the young woman demanded. She shook her sister off and advanced toward Asherton. Brown mushrooms burst from the floor and covered the cedar walls. The queen-regent shrieked and launched herself on the nurse, snatching the baby from her arms. Asherton raised his eyebrows, only faintly surprised, as though mushrooms sprouted from marble floors every day.
Magdala put out her hand, holding the woman back. “That’s enough!” she barked. “No closer.”
But Asherton stopped her. “My brother’s name was Evandaine, but I called him by his Russuli name—Evander.”
The young woman blinked at him blankly and then slowly shook her head. “Of course. I should have worked it out on my own. Tiernan was your father, and so of course Evander was your brother. I just never thought of it.”
“Did you know him?” Asherton asked.
With a melancholy smile, she said, “Your brother was my husband.”
The entry hall fell silent. The dark-haired woman stared at Asherton with a mixture of wonder and ire as toadstools spread down the stairs. Magdala waited to see what Asherton would do.
He tipped his head to the side slowly and his expression changed—like he’d remembered something from long ago. “You’re Valenna,” he breathed.
The woman nodded.
Magdala didn’t know what this meant, but Asherton’s face washed such an alarming shade of white, she gripped his elbow for fear he might fall over.
“We need to go,” the older woman said, still talking through her bearish smile. “You two can talk later.”
But Valenna, whoever she was, said quietly to Asherton, “He mentioned you a few times, but he didn’t tell me you were related, and I, idiot that I am, never thought of it.”
“He mentioned you as well,” Asherton said with a touch of hostility. “He wrote to me that he had followed you to Sennalaith. And he died in Sennalaith.”
