Chapter 11: Mira's Intelligence and the Name No One Speaks

The name came on a Thursday.

Mira brought it the way she brought everything consequential — folded inside something ordinary, offered between the warming of water for the washstand and the laying out of the morning's gown. She was smoothing the grey wool across the back of the chair, her eyes on the fabric, when she said it: "Lord Edric Farrow of the Stonebridge Farrens. He was in the corridor outside the anteroom yesterday evening."

Elizabeth was at the window. The city below was beginning its morning argument with itself — carts, voices, the distant percussion of a blacksmith who kept early hours. She kept her gaze there a moment longer before she turned.