The high table at the head of the great hall was so full of Liv’s friends and family that there was hardly room to eat without knocking your elbows against the person sitting to either side. Though she should, according to propriety, have sat at the exact center of the table with Keri at her side, Liv had long since made a practice of seating Rianne between them – at least until it was time for her daughter to be put to bed.

  “There won’t be any tarts or slices of pie until you’ve cleared the last of that salad off your plate,” Liv reminded her daughter.

  Rianne scowled, and Liv found it difficult not to grin at how cute her daughter was, even when throwing a bit of a fit. “But it has beets in it,” the girl whined. “Beets are disgusting.”

  “Beets are one of the few vegetables that survive frosts well,” Keri mentioned, from the little girl’s other side. “They’re grown all throughout the north by the Vakansa, though not as far as Kelthelis. Those particular beets were grown at the edge of a rift and shipped south through Al’Fenthia, so that we could have mana-rich food at our table, and so that you won’t ever have the sort of bone problems that your mother had growing up. After so many people have put in so much work to get them here, the least you can do, Rianne, is to eat them.”

  From Keri’s other side, Rei tried to help in his own way, pushing his empty plate back and standing up. “Well, I’ve finished mine,” he remarked, and Liv noted that he raised his voice just enough to be certain that his half-sister would hear him. “I’m going to go and get myself a slice of apple pie while it’s still hot.”

  Rianne gripped her fork as if it was a spear, and glared at Rei’s back as he walked away. Then, she stabbed her beet salad violently, as if it were a mana beast that she was trying to kill, and stuffed her mouth full of an oversized forkful.

  A commotion came from the door, and Liv looked away from her daughter long enough to see that Matthew and Triss had arrived from Whitehill. She’d half expected Henriette to arrive with them, and couldn’t help but frown when she saw that her niece still hadn’t arrived.

  Keri leaned over, placing his body behind Rianne’s chair. “You can go say hello to your brother,” he murmured to Liv. “I’ll make certain she doesn’t leave anything uneaten.”

  Liv grinned, turned her face toward Keri’s, and brushed her lips across his cheek. “Thank you. Once she’s had a bit of desert, it’s off to bed.” She straightened up, pushed her chair back, and stood. That meant that everyone else at the high table had to stand, but she waved them back down before they’d even finished rising. On her way around the table, Liv paused between her father and her grandmother.

  “I thought you might like to help put Rianne to bed,” she offered. “We’ll take her up once she’s had a slice of pie or something.”

  Eila t?r V?inis shook her head and took a drink of wine. “I don’t want to crowd the girl,” Liv’s grandmother said. “I’ll steal her away for a bit in the morning. Why don’t we let her have some time with her grandfather, tonight.”

  Valtteri nodded. “Thank you. I would like that – I don’t get to see her often enough,” he admitted.

  Liv nodded, then left them both to their meals, hurrying around the high table and down the center aisle to meet Matthew and Triss where they’d stopped to speak with Baron Arnold Crosbie, who sat with two of his seven sons – Baudwin and Bliant.

  Arnold, whose hair had already been gray when Liv had first met him, so many years ago, had lost a great deal of weight in recent years. He’d always been a stocky man, with broad shoulders and a thick neck that spoke of strength. But having reached his seventy-second year, age seemed to have caught up to the man all at once. Hardly any hair remained atop his head, revealing a scalp that had become spotted and creased. His back was bent, and he seemed to have shrunk in on himself. Even his eyes had become cloudy.

  Baudwin and Bliant, on the other hand, were men in the prime of their lives. Baudwin, the younger of the two, had spent nearly twenty years carving a new barony out of the mountains to the northwest of the Aspen Valley, where gold had been found. And Bliant, Liv was certain, now conducted the majority of Valegard’s day to day business, in the place of his father.

  “Don’t rise,” Liv said, placing a hand on Arnold’s shoulder to stop him. “We’re family.”

  “That we are,” Beatrice said, slipping an arm around Liv to squeeze her in a hug. “I see one of my nieces up there pushing food about her plate, and the other down here. Where’s my daughter at?” Though there were now strands of gray in Triss’s hair, she was as fit as ever, and the last Liv had heard she still practiced with her sword in the training grounds at Castle Whitehill every morning.

  Liv stepped back from Triss long enough to shrug and shake her head, before she embraced her brother in turn. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I saw her earlier today and told her that she needed to come to dinner. We’ve had a seat set aside for her, but I thought perhaps she’d waited for the two of you to arrive and you’d all come up together.” I hope that she hasn’t got herself into trouble.

  But before she could say anything else, Baudwin had not only stood from his seat, but dragged a girl of perhaps fourteen or fifteen years to her feet, as well. “You’ll remember my daughter, Clementine,” he said. “Give the queen a curtsy, girl.”

  “I do remember,” Liv said, reaching out to take Clementine’s hands and raise the girl up, so that Liv could kiss her cheek. “It’s been a few years. You’re taller than I am, now.”

  Clementine blushed. “Perhaps just a touch, your majesty.”

  “It won’t be long before you’re at Whitehill to attend college,” Liv said. “Perhaps if we can find your cousin, we can get Ettie to give you a tour. Could you all give me a moment to speak with Matthew?” She took her brother by his sleeve, and drew him off to one side of the room, finding a space near the wall where they could speak without being interrupted for a moment.

  “What is it?” Matthew asked, taking a sip from a goblet of wine he’d managed to snag somewhere in the midst of the chaos. Looking at him was like seeing a vision of how Henry, his father, might have aged if the old baron hadn’t lost the use of his legs in an eruption. A well trimmed beard framed Matthew’s face nicely, emphasizing his jawline, and though it was now more salt than pepper, the effect only made him look more authoritative.

  “What isn’t it,” Liv remarked, with a sigh. “This entire council session is shaping up to be a good bit of trouble. I thought we were only going to have to deal with a push from the guilds, but it turns out they’ve not only got everyone one of our mayors on board, they’ve also apparently been quietly negotiating with Houses Keria, Isakki, and Esteri. And your daughter has apparently planted herself right in the middle of it, which is only making me worry even more about where she’s gotten off to.”

  Matthew frowned and set his goblet down on the nearest table. “Ettie’s involved, somehow? I mean, beyond the fact that she has a vote as my heir.”

  “She came to me and told me that she’d overheard two tradesmen speaking in the common room of an inn,” Liv explained. “Besides the usual grumbling and a few slurs thrown my way, she also was convinced they were plotting to kill me somehow.”

  “Tell me you’ve found them and arrested them already,” Matthew said, with a scowl.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Liv shook her head. “We haven’t found them yet. I don’t actually think they’re any danger to me, but as soon as Wren gets back I’ll set her to hunting them down.” She hesitated. “But I may have made a mistake with Henriette. I told her that if she happened to see them around, she should bring word to us up here.”

  Matthew raised his one good hand, placing his first two fingers to his forehead, and his thumb to his cheek, as if he’d come down with a sudden headache. “Liv,” he groaned.

  “I told her not to go looking for them,” Liv said. “Just to keep an eye out. I was quite specific that I didn’t want her trying to go creeping around and breaking into places she wasn’t supposed to be, and that she wasn’t to try capturing anyone herself. Just that if she happened to recognize them out drinking or something – and I told her to bring her Red Shield friend, if she went wandering around.”

  “Liv, she’s eighteen,” Matthew said, with a sigh. “At that age, you were running around fighting Antrians, animated skeletons, and anything else you could find. I can absolutely guarantee you that whatever you meant to say, my daughter took it as permission to go have her own adventure and save her queen.”

  Liv couldn’t help but wince. “Blood and shadows,” she cursed. “She wasn’t there to meet you when you got in? She didn’t leave a note, or anything?”

  Matthew shook his head. “I assumed that she’d be up here with you.”

  “Alright,” Liv said. “Alright, we’ll find her. Let me tell Keri and my father to get Rianne to bed, and then we’ll gather up my guards and sweep the city. If we talk to Lia Every, she should be able to figure out whether any of Ettie’s friends are missing, and maybe how long they’ve all been gone.”

  “Alright. While you do that, I’m going to tell my wife,” Matthew said. He took a deep breath and blew it out as if bracing himself for battle. “You know she’s going to want to come with us, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Liv reached up to pat Matthew’s shoulder, then turned and slipped off along the wall to make her way back to the high table. There, she found that not only had her daughter devoured an entire slice of apple pie, but the princess had also managed to smear it all across her face.

  “Excellent,” Liv pronounced, upon seeing the empty plate. “Wonderful timing. Keri, I need to take care of something with Triss and Matthew. Could you get our daughter into bed without me? I believe my father’s already agreed to help.”

  Rianne frowned. “Why aren’t you coming, Mama?”

  “I have something important to do,” Liv told her. “And I’m sure you can do without me for one evening.” She leaned down to kiss her daughter right on the top of her head.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Keri promised. He stood up from his chair, placed his hands beneath their daughter’s arms, and scooped her up, swinging the girl out of her chair and up against his chest. “Come along, little one. You’ve already got a special treat tonight with your grandfather here.”

  Liv watched long enough to see Keri pass the sticky little girl off to Valtteri, who hoisted the princess up onto one shoulder. Once the two men had taken her out of the hall, she took just a moment to scan the tables, in case there were any other absences that she hadn’t noticed.

  With so many people in the city for the council, the crowd of laughing, drinking faces was filled with her vassals and political allies. Bryn Grenfell, her son Isaac at her side, was sharing a bottle of wine with her cousin Lenota, who’d come in her mother’s stead from Eagle’s Rest. Miina had taken the opportunity to share a meal with her father, and Liv saw that her own grandmother had made her way down from the high table to join them. The little knot of blue-haired Eld stuck out nearly as much as a small group of Kaulris, the elders wearing veils or masks while the students, who’d benefitted from Arjun’s continued and intensive attentions, permitted their faces to be seen. Repeated surgeries combined with magical healing had left them with little more in the way of deformities than scarring, and even that was no worse than what a veteran soldier might live with.

  There were knots of Asuris and Iravata, both groups of people that Liv had intended to speak with that evening, to shore up her support and be certain which way their votes would fall. Sakari must have felt her gaze, for he looked up from his conversation, raised his goblet, and smiled. Liv nodded in return, then noticed that Rei had somehow attached himself to Clementine Crosbie, who was apparently just enough – not older, precisely, but more mature – than him to be the subject of an immediate and intense infatuation. Not that the girl seemed aware of it, despite the attention Rei was paying her.

  Wrangling votes, however, would need to wait. As much as it pained Liv to step away on the night before a council meeting, being certain that her niece was safe was more important. But she’d already decided she was going to let Henriette hear it, once this was all done.

  ?

  By the time the guildmistress had answers for them, Liv’s personal guards had already been combing the streets of Bald Peak for nearly an entire bell.

  “There’s three students missing,” Lia Every declared, closing the door to her office behind her on her way back from a hushed conversation out in the hall. “Henriette, a Red Shield named Shooting Star, and one of your advanced students, Liv. Ronja of House Asuris. On a crutch, apparently.”

  Every’s hair had long since gone entirely white, though it didn’t look nearly so vibrant or healthy as Liv’s, and she would never be mistaken for a member of House Syv?. About five years before, she’d gotten sick of how brittle the ends had become, and chopped nearly all the length off, leaving her with something like a man’s haircut, brushed back from her face. Having reached the desk behind her chair, she carefully lowered herself into it.

  “I can confirm that both Henriette and Ronja attended their afternoon class with Archmagus Corbett,” Every continued. “I have several reports that they were spotted shortly thereafter, meeting up with the Red Shield at an Armed Combat course, during which he apparently handily defeated everyone he sparred against. That’s the last time anyone saw them on campus.”

  “How can they be missing for that long without anyone realizing?” Triss demanded, pacing back and forth across the fine Dakruiman carpet that covered the stone floor. Liv’s sister in law had changed from a gown into a doublet, breeches and thigh-high leather boots, and she’d buckled her rapier on at her left hip. “Don’t you keep track of them?”

  “They aren’t children, Triss,” Matthew reminded her, from where he’d collapsed into one of the guildmistress’s chairs. “You remember what it was like when we were at Coral Bay. Half the time we were eating out at one of the inns in town, or getting up to some kind of mischief. And I’m certain it wasn’t any better when Liv was there.”

  “We make a deliberate choice to trust the students, and to give them freedom,” Liv said, though she felt as if she was trying to convince herself nearly as much as the two of them. “That means that sometimes they do get into trouble. We’ll find her, Triss. I promise we will.”

  She tried to imagine what it would feel like if Rianne were missing, somewhere out in the city, and knew that in her sister-in-law’s place she would be positively gnawing her own leg off, like an animal stuck in a trap. But then, it wasn’t exactly the same: Henriette wasn’t nearly as young as Rianne. She was an apprentice of the mages guild, and she could fight. And she wasn’t alone.

  A knock came on the door, and Triss rushed over to open it, letting Kaija in.

  “What have you found?” Liv asked.

  “I’ve got reliable testimony placing them at just about every common room in the city over the course of the afternoon and into the early evening,” the head of Liv’s personal guard explained, pulling the office door shut behind her. “They weren’t exactly forgettable, with that Asuris coloring and Ronja lugging around that crutch.”

  “I knew it,” Matthew said, with a sigh. “They decided to go out and hunt those tradesmen down.”

  “Which guilds was it?” Triss demanded.

  “The Smiths Guild, and the Framers and Joiners,” Liv said.

  “Alright, then.” Triss put a hand on the hilt of her sword. “Where know where to go. If they were poking around and they got into trouble, odds are it was with one of those two guilds. All we have to do is kick down their doors, search their guildhalls, and question everyone we find.”

  “That’s going to cause problems,” Lia Every warned. “The guilds are already pushing the idea that they aren’t treated as well in Alliance lands as they are in Lucania. If you start searching their buildings and arresting people without a good reason, that’s only going to make people angry.”

  “I couldn’t care less what they think,” Triss said, her voice rising, and her eyes flashing with anger. “If they’ve got my daughter, I’ll gut every one of them myself, and then put their heads up on pikes atop the Whitehill Castle walls.”

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  Dramatis Personae

  Livara t?r Valtteri Kaen Syv? - Archmage, former scullery maid at Castle Whitehill, the bastard daughter of Maggie Brodbeck and Valtteri Ka Auris. Queen of the Alliance and Lady of Winter. About to make certain people very, very unhappy. [38 Rings of Mana, not counting mana stored in items.]

  Arnold Crosbie, Baron Valegard - Father of Baudwin, Bliant, Triss and several other sons. Husband of Agneta. Letting his sons handle things, for the most part. [14 Rings of Mana]

  Baudwin Crosbie, Baron of Gold Creek - Father of Clementine, brother of Triss. "Look at my daughter!" [16 Rings of Mana]

  Beatrice 'Triss' Summerset (Formerly Crosbie) - Daughter of Baron Arnold of Valegard, Wife of Matthew, mother of Henriiette, sister-in-law of Liv, sister of more brothers than anyone could ever want. Mom sense tingling. [17 Rings of Mana]

  Clementine Crosbie, Heir to Gold Crek - Daughter of Baudwin, niece of Triss, Cousin of Henriette. Being presented to the Queen like her father's prized horse... uncomfortable! [7 Rings of Mana]

  Eila t?r V?inis - Mother of Valtteri, widow of Auris, grandmother of Liv. Bedtime? Don't mind if I do! [30 Rings of Mana]

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - Originally of the Unconquered House of B?lris, now Prince Consort of the Alliance. Husband of Liv, father to Rei and the princess. Left to supervise bedtime. [22 Rings of Mana.]

  Kaija - Captain of Liv's personal guard. Gathering intelligence. [22 Rings of Mana]

  Lia Every - Guildmistress and Chancellor of the College at Bald Peak. Has lost three students. [20 Rings of Mana]

  Matthew Summerset, Duke of Whitehill - Henry and Julianne's son, husband to Beatrice. ::Facepalm:: [14 Rings of Mana]

  Rei ka Inkeris k?n B?lris - Son of Keri and Rika. Taunting his little sister with pie. [14 Rings of Mana]

  Rianne t?r Inkeris, Princess of the Alliance - Daughter of Liv and Keri. Archenemy: Beets. I feel for ya, kid. [11 Rings of Mana]

  Valtteri ka Auris - Father of Liv, son of Auris and Eila. Enjoying being a grandfather. [37 Rings of Mana]