The duke frowned briefly at the man. “Tris is sharp-tempered, it’s true, but she is a good friend to those in need.”

The man bowed his head. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Within minutes a manservant had taken charge of the guards and the horses and Tris had settled the duke in the sitting room. “I’d like to speak with the three of you, if I may?” asked Vedris when she had served him tea. “I know you’re busy, but I have a rather large favor to ask.”

Tris curtsied, blushing slightly. “Of course, Your Grace,” she said. “The others are on their way. They just need to tidy up.”

He smiled at her. He had long known that the younger Tris had admired him, as a young girl would admire a polished older man who talked of books with her. From the color on her cheeks it seemed that some of her old feeling still remained. “Did you summon them from here?” he asked. “Sandry told me you had all closed your connections to one another.”

Tris’s blush deepened. “I sent the maid. We’re not who we were, Your Grace,” she explained. “Would you like it if Sandry walked freely in your mind, among all the things you have been and done?”

“Shurri Firesword, I would not!” The very thought gave Vedris gooseflesh.

“They say travel gives you a world of experiences.” Briar came in, still drying his hands. “Well, I have plenty of experiences I wouldn’t share with my worst enemy.”

Vedris raised his eyebrows. “Not even with the girls, who understand you best?” he asked mildly.

Briar grinned. “Particularly not with the girls.”

“I know about the cookmaid,” Tris muttered. “You’re lucky she’s too silly to think you’re serious.”

“What are you worried about?” snapped Briar. “I make sure any girl I go walking with knows I’m not serious.”

“Walking?” asked Daja. She entered the room and kissed the duke on the cheek before she looked at Briar and raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call it?”

Vedris saw that all three of the young mages frowned, despite their jokes. The discord Sandry had told him about still continued, it seemed. “Please spare me what any of you call it,” Vedris said delicately. At the sound of his voice, they all looked at him. Briar grinned and shrugged, taking a chair. Daja followed suit, while Tris poured out tea for the others.

As she did so, Chime sailed into the room on wide-spread wings. She dropped the bag of tiny, fish roe pearls in Daja’s lap—one pearl floated in her glass body where a real creature’s stomach would be—and continued on to settle gracefully on the duke’s shoulder. Emitting the musical glass croon that was her purr, Chime rested her head against Vedris’s cheek.

“Like any beautiful creature, you live for worship,” he said affectionately as he stroked her neck with one finger. They had met on Tris’s first visit to Duke’s Citadel after her return home. Vedris never tired of looking at Chime. “I brought you something that will agree with you much better than pearls.” Reaching into his belt purse, he brought out a small packet of parchment and opened it on his silk-clad knee. A small pile of gold dust lay inside it.

“You spoil her, Your Grace,” Tris said as Chime walked once around the duke’s neck, purring, before she walked down his chest to the offered treat. Neatly she began to eat the gold dust as if it were grain. Despite their earlier anger with her, Daja and Briar watched, fascinated, as the dust flowed in a ribbon down Chime’s clear gullet.

Once Chime had finished, she flew to the window seat and curled up on a cushion to nap. Tris settled next to her.

Vedris folded up the empty parchment, satisfied that the interlude with Chime had relaxed these three prickly young adults. “I understand that I am about to ask a great deal. I am certain that you three have had your fill of travel. However, I have been presented with a…situation. You are aware that Sandrilene inherited considerable estates from her mother in the empire of Namorn.”

“One of her mother’s cousins administers them for her,” said Tris.

“And she’s a clehame—what they call a countess—from her mother’s inheritance there,” added Daja. “The women inherit titles on their own in Namorn.”

“But even without all that, she’s still awful rich.” Briar was watching vines move around the deep scars on one of his palms. “From all the investing and things she does here.”

“Yes, but she has neglected the Namornese side of her affairs. In part the fault is mine,” confessed the duke. “We have tried to play down Sandrilene’s financial situation, your teachers and I. Her magical abilities seemed more important at first. You know what the world is like. Heiresses are normally pawns, unable to live their own lives or to make their own decisions. It is not a life that Sandrilene would enjoy. Here, we have protected her from that.

“But in protecting her, we also kept her from doing her duty to those for whom she is responsible in Namorn,” Vedris continued. “The people on her lands, who farm them and reap the profits for her to live on. Her cousin Ambros has looked after her interests for all of these years, managing them as well as his own lands. I know that it was wrong to encourage Sandrilene to stay here when she has responsibilities elsewhere. Berenene, the empress of Namorn, is also a kinswoman of Sandrilene’s. She has expressed…displeasure that I made no effort to force Sandrilene to go to her Namornese family.”