House Corvyr had one move left.
She knew it before anyone spoke again.
Two
What a Daughter Is For
By morning the house had divided itself.
Not in doors slammed or voices raised. House Corvyr no longer possessed the staff or heat for that kind of disorder. The split showed in quieter ways. Breakfast laid later than usual because no one had rung on time. A maid carrying coal with her mouth set hard enough to make her look older. The drawing room fire allowed to burn low while the breakfast room grate was fed first. Junor speaking to the steward in the front passage with the clipped reserve people use when the house has begun listening to itself.
Sabine had not slept. She had changed gowns before dawn, washed in water that had gone cold in the pitcher, and pinned her hair without a maid. Mourning-dark again. Plain cuffs. No ornament beyond the ring she always wore. Her face in the glass had looked composed for the same reason stone looked composed.
She found her mother and brother in the morning sitting room off the east side gallery, where the light came gray throughthe windows and showed every weakness in the upholstery. Mirelle had chosen the room for its smallness or its privacy. Perhaps both. A tray waited on the low table between them. The tea had already begun to cool.
Cassian stood near the hearth with a stack of opened letters in his hand. Mirelle sat straight-backed on the settee, dressed for morning in dove-dark silk with a narrow collar and pearl buttons polished almost white. Every line of her remained controlled. The control itself had become a kind of fury.
Both looked up when Sabine entered.
“We are not finished,” Mirelle said.
“I did not suppose you were.”
Sabine took the remaining chair. No one offered her tea. That was almost a relief.
Cassian set the letters down. “I have already sent for copies of the road claim correspondence. There is no sense in acting as though this proclamation demands an answer today.”
“It demands registration dates,” Sabine said. “The answer follows from that.”
“It does not.” He pushed a hand back through his hair. Sleep had left him somewhere before dawn. His collar sat wrong. “We can petition. We can wait to see how other houses respond. We can speak to Deren, to Halven, to anyone with enough sense not to throw a daughter at a rite called for a man like Lucien Vhalor.”
Mirelle’s voice came cool and clean. “The Trials are a grave disguised as honor.”
Sabine looked at her mother. Mirelle had said terrible things before with lower stakes. This one she believed.
“Yes,” Sabine said.
Cassian stared at her. “Then why are we still speaking as if—”
“Because calling it a grave does not unwrite the rest.”
“The rest?” he said.
“The loan. The parcels. The crown’s rights under default. The fact that the estate can be taken apart lawfully while we continue speaking of alternatives in a room with one fire lit.”
Mirelle’s hand settled on the arm of the settee. “You will not answer horror with obedience simply because the horror has official seals.”
“I am answering arithmetic.”
Her mother’s gaze sharpened. “There is a great vulgarity in reducing every human cost to a column.”
“There is a greater one in pretending the cost disappears when we refuse to count it.”
Cassian took two strides toward the window, then turned back. “You keep saying that as if no one understands the debt but you.”
“I understand who is being asked to pay it.”
His expression changed. He heard the accusation at once and deserved at least part of it.
