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“I can mention that clean linens are needed in the southern solarium.”

Her careful wording protects us both.

“Mention it,” I say.

Miana inclines her head and turns toward the door.

After she leaves, I lift the top cloth from the bundle.

A small trowel lies beneath it.

The iron blade is sharp and recently cleaned. Its wooden handle has been wrapped with a strip of leather to improve the grip. It is not valuable, but someone chose it for usefulness and concealed it from guards who might question why a laundress carried a garden tool.

I close my fingers around the handle.

Across the room, another dead planter is carried away. The space it leaves exposes a clean rectangle of floor beneath years of dust. Storm-filtered light reaches the workbench. The folded linens wait beside my first tool.

The spire remains a prison built by demon hands.

Prisons still contain ground.

I set the trowel on the cleared bench and begin deciding what I will grow in mine.

10

DRAXON

Courtly greetings are warfare stripped of useful weapons.

I endure them on Ti'lith's upper promenade because absence would feed the same rumors as defeat. The storm-court has gathered beneath a covered arcade overlooking the western spires. Black pillars support a roof of grown stone, while the open side admits cold wind, red dust, and the silver glare of lightning.

House lords arrange themselves according to rank without admitting they have done so. Volvath occupy the center. Soz'garoth gather near the sheltered walls, their charms protected from the charged air. A pair of feathered Trolvor nobles claim the widest space so no one steps on their folded wings.

Every conversation pauses when I approach, then resumes with greater care.

"Lord Obsidius."

The first greeting comes from a Volvath whose eastern farms supply half the court's metallic garden-stock. His bronze hair is braided around the base of four polished horns.

"Your house prospers," I say.

"The storms have favored the latest planting."

The storms have done nothing of the kind. His Soz'garoth exhausted themselves for six days correcting poisoned soil. Acknowledging their labor would require crediting a lower caste, so the weather receives his gratitude.

His gaze drops briefly to the silver dust still lodged along the edge of my boot.

"The Council ceremony was memorable."

"It was witnessed."

"Your new human possesses spirit."

"She possesses a name."

His smile weakens. "Of course."

I move on.