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  She continued on toward the palace. It was a low, single-story building with a large, packed-earth courtyard. Siri avoided the crowds of haggling people at the front, rounding to the back and going in the kitchen entrance. Mab, the kitchen mistress, stopped singing as the door opened, then eyed Siri.

  “Your father’s been looking for you, child,” Mab said, turning away and humming as she attacked a pile of onions.

  “I suspect that he has. ” Siri walked over and sniffed at a pot, which bore the calm scent of boiling potatoes.

  “Went to the hills again, didn’t you? Skipped your tutorial sessions, I’ll bet. ”

  Siri smiled, then pulled out another of the bright yellow flowers, spinning it between two fingers.

  Mab rolled her eyes. “And been corrupting the city youth again, I suspect. Honestly, girl, you should be beyond these things at your age. Your father will have words with you about shirking your responsibilities. ”

  “I like words,” Siri said. “And I always learn a few new ones when Father gets angry. I shouldn’t neglect my education, now should I?”

  Mab snorted, dicing some pickled cucumbers into the onions.

  “Honestly, Mab,” Siri said, twirling the flower, feeling her hair shade a little bit red. “I don’t see what the problem is. Austre made the flowers, right? He put the colors on them, so they can’t be evil. I mean, we call him God of Colors, for heaven’s sake. ”

  “Flowers ain’t evil,” Mab said, adding something that looked like grass to her concoction, “assuming they’re left where Austre put them. We shouldn’t use Austre’s beauty to make ourselves more important. ”

  “A flower doesn’t make me look more important. ”

  “Oh?” Mab asked, adding the grass, cucumber, and onions to one of her boiling pots. She banged the side of the pot with the flat of her knife, listening, then nodded to herself and began fishing under the counter for more vegetables. “You tell me,” she continued, voice muffled. “You really think walking through the city with a flower like that didn’t draw attention to yourself?”

  “That’s only because the city is so drab. If there were a bit of color around, nobody would notice a flower. ”

  Mab reappeared, hefting a box filled with various tubers. “You’d have us decorate the place like Hallandren? Maybe we should start inviting Awakeners into the city? How’d you like that? Some devil sucking the souls out of children, strangling people with their own clothing? Bringing men back from the grave, then using their dead bodies for cheap labor? Sacrificing women on their unholy altars?”

  Siri felt her hair whiten slightly with anxiety. Stop that! she thought. The hair seemed to have a mind of its own, responding to gut feelings.

  “That sacrificing-maidens part is only a story,” Siri said. “They don’t really do that. ”

  “Stories come from somewhere. ”

  “Yes, they come from old women sitting by the hearth in the winter. I don’t think we need to be so frightened. The Hallandren will do what they want, which is fine by me, as long as they leave us alone. ”

  Mab chopped tubers, not looking up.

  “We’ve got the treaty, Mab,” Siri said. “Father and Vivenna will make sure we’re safe, and that will make the Hallandren leave us alone. ”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “They will. You don’t need to worry. ”

  “They have better armies,” Mab said, chopping, not looking up, “better steel, more food, and those . . . those things. It makes people worry. Maybe not you, but sensible folk. ”

  The cook’s words were hard to dismiss out of hand. Mab had a sense, a wisdom beyond her instinct for spices and broths. However, she also tended to fret. “You’re worrying about nothing, Mab. You’ll see. ”

  “I’m just saying that this is a bad time for a royal princess to be running around with flowers, standin’ out and inviting Austre’s dislike. ”

  Siri sighed. “Fine, then,” she said, tossing her last flower into the stew-pot. “Now we can all stand out together. ”

  Mab froze, then rolled her eyes, chopping a root. “I assume that was a vanavel flower?”

  “Of course,” Siri said, sniffing at the steaming pot. “I know better than to ruin a good stew. And I still say you’re overreacting. ”

  Mab sniffed. “Here,” she said, pulling out another knife. “Make yourself useful. There’s roots that need choppin’. ”

  “Shouldn’t I report to my father?” Siri said, grabbing a gnarled vanavel root and beginning to chop.

  “He’ll just send you back here and make you work in the kitchens as a punishment,” Mab said, banging the pot with her knife again. She firmly believed that she could judge when a dish was done by the way the pot rang.

  “Austre help me if Father ever discovers I like it down here. ”

  “You just like being close to the food,” Mab said, fishing Siri’s flower out of the stew then tossing it aside. “Either way, you can’t report to him. He’s in conference with Yarda. ”

  Siri gave no reaction—she simply continued to chop. Her hair, however, grew blond with excitement. Father’s conferences with Yarda usually last hours, she thought. Not much point in simply sitting around, waiting for him to get done. . . .

  Mab turned to get something off the table, and by the time she looked back, Siri had bolted out the door and was on her way toward the royal stables. Bare minutes later, she galloped away from the palace, wearing her favorite brown cloak, feeling an exhilarated thrill that sent her hair into a deep blond. A nice quick ride would be a good way to round out the day.

  After all, her punishment was likely to be the same either way.

  * * *

  DEDELIN, KING OF IDRIS, set the letter down on his desk. He had stared at it long enough. It was time to decide whether or not to send his eldest daughter to her death.

  Despite the advent of spring, his chamber was cold. Warmth was a rare thing in the Idris highlands; it was coveted and enjoyed, for it lingered only briefly each summer. The chambers were also stark. There was a beauty in simplicity. Even a king had no right to display arrogance by ostentation.

  Dedelin stood up, looking out his window and into the courtyard. The palace was small by the world’s standards—only a single story high, with a peaked wooden roof and squat stone walls. But it was large by Idris standards, and it bordered on flamboyant. This could be forgiven, for the palace was also a meeting hall and center of operations for his entire kingdom.

  The king could see General Yarda out of the corner of his eye. The burly man stood waiting, his hands clasped behind his back, his thick beard tied in three places. He was the only other person in the room.

  Dedelin glanced back at the letter. The paper was a bright pink, and the garish color stood out on his desk like a drop of blood in the snow. Pink was a color one would never see in Idris. In Hallandren, however—center of the world’s dye industry—such tasteless hues were commonplace.

  “Well, old friend?” Dedelin asked. “Do you have any advice for me?”

  General Yarda shook his head. “War is coming, Your Majesty. I feel it in the winds and read it in the reports of our spies. Hallandren still considers us rebels, and our passes to the north are too tempting. They will attack. ”

  “Then I shouldn’t send her,” Dedelin said, looking back out his window. The courtyard bustled with people in furs and cloaks coming to market.

  “We can’t stop the war, Your Majesty,” Yarda said. “But . . . we can slow it. ”

  Dedelin turned back.

  Yarda stepped forward, speaking softly. “This is not a good time. Our troops still haven’t recovered from those Vendis raids last fall, and with the fires in the granary this winter . . . ” Yarda shook his head. “We cannot afford to get into a defensive war in the summer. Our best ally against the Hallandren are the snows. We can’t let this conflict occur on their terms. If we do, we are dead. ”

  The words all made sense.
r />   “Your Majesty,” Yarda said, “they are waiting for us to break the treaty as an excuse to attack. If we move first, they will strike. ”

  “If we keep the treaty, they will still strike,” Dedelin said.

  “But later. Perhaps months later. You know how slow Hallandren politics are. If we keep the treaty, there will be debates and arguments. If those last until the snows, then we will have gained the time we need so badly. ”

  It all made sense. Brutal, honest sense. All these years, Dedelin had stalled and watched as the Hallandren court grew more and more aggressive, more and more agitated. Every year, voices called for an assault on the “rebel Idrians” living up in the highlands. Every year, those voices grew louder and more plentiful. Every year, Dedelin’s placating and politics kept the armies away. He had hoped, perhaps, that the rebel leader Vahr and his Pahn Kahl dissidents would draw attention away from Idris, but Vahr had been captured, his so-called army dispersed. His actions had only served to make Hallandren more focused on its enemies.

  The peace would not last. Not with Idris ripe, not with the trade routes worth so much. Not with the current crop of Hallandren gods, who seemed so much more erratic than their predecessors. He knew all of that. But he also knew that breaking the treaty would be foolish. When you were cast into the den of a beast, you did not provoke it to anger.

  Yarda joined him beside the window, looking out, leaning one elbow against the side of the frame. He was a harsh man born of harsh winters. But he was also as good a man as Dedelin had ever known—a part of the king longed to marry Vivenna to the general’s own son.

  That was foolishness. Dedelin had always known this day would come. He’d crafted the treaty himself, and it demanded he send his daughter to marry the God King. The Hallandren needed a daughter of the royal blood to reintroduce the traditional bloodline into their monarchy. It was something the depraved and vainglorious people of the lowlands had long coveted, and only that specific clause in the treaty had saved Idris these twenty years.

  That treaty had been the first official act of Dedelin’s reign, negotiated furiously following his father’s assassination. Dedelin gritted his teeth. How quickly he’d bowed before the whims of his enemies. Yet he would do it again; an Idris monarch would do anything for his people. That was one big difference between Idris and Hallandren.

  “If we send her, Yarda,” Dedelin said, “we send her to her death. ”

  “Maybe they won’t harm her,” Yarda finally said.

  “You know better than that. The first thing they’ll do when war comes is use her against me. This is Hallandren. They invite Awakeners into their palaces, for Austre’s sake!”

  Yarda fell silent. Finally, he shook his head. “Latest reports say their army has grown to include some forty thousand Lifeless. ”

  Lord God of Colors, Dedelin thought, glancing at the letter again. Its language was simple. Vivenna’s twenty-second birthday had come, and the terms of the treaty stipulated that Dedelin could wait no longer.