Walking straight toward her desk, Karris felt like a young Blackguard, coming to report to her watch captain rather than as the lady of her household, coming to confront a slave. A slave! But Karris’s knees felt weak.

“The White told me long ago,” Marissia said, “‘She who controls the information controls everything.’”

Karris was curiously numb. She walked over to Marissia’s desk, pulled a chair over, and sat across from her. Marissia studied her quietly, an expression that Karris couldn’t quite read fluttering around the edges of her face like a moth trying to escape from a tent.

“My father had a different take: she who controls the Prism controls everything,” Karris said.

They stared at each other for a long time, and for the very first time, Karris looked at Marissia as a woman; for the first time, she ignored the clipped ears and looked at her eyes. How had she missed it? She’d known Marissia was competent, of course. Blackguards liked working with competent slaves who made sure there were no distractions from the work at hand. Marissia directed her small army of subordinate slaves perfectly, making sure everything here was done precisely right, precisely on time. Such oversight was more than enough work for any one woman, much less any one slave.

Much less any one slave? An odd thought. Slaves came from every social stratum in every land. One poor decision or too many bad debts and no family willing pay for your foolishness, or bandits or pirates and no friends willing to pay your ransom. Whether you were at fault, or utterly innocent—it could be one tiny step away. When she was a girl, Karris had played with Taira Appleton, when they were young enough that complementary personalities had mattered more than differing stations.

But in the False Prism’s War, the Appletons’ lord had sided with Dazen Guile. The Appleton estate had been on the border of Blood Forest and Atash, directly in the path of Gavin’s army. Lady Appleton had known they would be overrun if she answered her lord’s call to arms. She did it anyway, loyalty overcoming sense, mistaking a question of smart and stupid for one of right and wrong. Karris still wasn’t sure whether the action was more praiseworthy or blameworthy. Within a week, Lady Appleton’s estates were taken, her six sons killed, her four daughters clipped and sold.

Marissia stared at Karris, and Karris studied her back, each silent, broken mirrors to each other, Marissia’s hair its natural red, Karris’s hair, naturally red, now dyed black.

Where was Taira now? Where were her sisters? Even knowing how easy it was to fall into slavery, Karris had somehow kept slaves at arm’s length, made them other. It made them more bearable. One misstep and she could have sat in Marissia’s place, serving some lord.

Come to think of it, if her own loathsome father hadn’t been careful to keep the White Oaks aligned with Gavin and Andross Guile …

No, no, no, Orholam, please no. She’d never thought of it this way. His maneuvering had been all cowardice; it hadn’t been …

She remembered her father’s face, during the feast, while the real Gavin Guile had mocked him and made bawdy jokes about bedding his daughter in exotic ways. Father had looked stricken. He’d looked pathetically weak. But what could he do?

With Dazen’s burning of their estate on Big Jasper, the White Oaks had lost the bulk of their fortune and all their best people. They’d also had enormous debts to nobles who’d sided with Dazen, debts they could never pay. Debts they might not be required to pay if Gavin won the war. From her father’s perspective, the White Oaks’ only hope was in binding themselves to the real Gavin Guile and his father, Andross.

What if father had thought, while the young, drunken Karris was being led away to be … forced … what if he thought, ‘Better she be forced once and be married to the Prism than that she be made a slave and raped by whoever wanted to, forever’?

Weak. Disgusting. Wrong. But not selfish. Not loveless. And he’d blown out his brains when Karris hated him for it.

She hadn’t shed one bitter tear for her father since she’d refused the abortifacient.

She felt suddenly very, very sick, but she tried to regain focus. No weakness here, not in front of this woman.

Marissia opened a cabinet, hesitated, choosing, and pulled out a decanter full of amber liquid. She produced a single, ornate crystal glass, and filled it with a more than generous double pour. She set the glass exactly in the middle of the small table. It was an homage to an old Blood Forest custom, born of a hospitality that defied poverty. A family might be able to afford only one nice goblet, but that one would be shared between host and guest.

Whether families retained the tradition as they grew in wealth or quickly discarded the tradition to give each person her own glass said a lot about how that family felt about their origins.

Marissia took the glass, inclined it to Karris, and drank.

Chromeria tradition, though, dictated that slaves and masters or mistresses not drink together. If two social unequals dined or drank together, at least the lesser was supposed to defer to the greater.

Marissia’s eyes danced, as if daring Karris: Am I your host who is sharing her own liquor with you, or a slave? Who am I to you? she asked.

To hell with it. In this, Marissia was Karris’s superior. She’d been running a spy network for how long? Besides, it had always been wine or brandy shared in Blood Forest, never whisky. Maybe it was time for new traditions.

Karris took the glass and took a gulp. It set her on fire, and pain had never felt so good. She counted it a victory that she didn’t cough. As the fire spread through her gut, she held up the glass, as if admiring the color. It was a thing aficionados seemed to do. “Barrenmoor?”

Whiskies were a niche taste, made even more so by the vast distances the barrels had to travel from the distilleries at the edge of Blood Forest in the highlands above Green Haven and their subsequent cost. Karris hadn’t been able to afford the stuff on her Blackguard wages. She’d guessed Barrenmoor only because it was one of the two best.

“Crag Tooth,” Marissia said, examining it in turn and taking another sip.

“Mmm,” Karris said. The other one. Dammit.

“Easy miss. This is the sixteen. After it’s matured sixteen years, it mellows to be easier drinking like Barrenmoor. I prefer it because it still retains its fiery character and complexity while time takes off the rough edges and impetuosity.”

Karris looked at Marissia sharply. Sixteen years? Rough edges and impetuosity? The woman’s eyes danced again.

Damn her, Karris was not going to like this woman.

“And how does it do as it ages further?”

“Crag Tooth hasn’t been a player for that long, but I’m confident that in the fullness of time it will bring Colors and satrapahs to their knees.”

They drank together, trading sips, each thinking private thoughts. They watched the storm smash all its rage on the Chromeria, lightning striking the tops of the towers themselves, power channeled down into the earth itself, diffused, harmless. Rain sheeting the windows so thickly it was impossible to see to any distance. Wind hammering the tower so hard it swayed, but was unbroken. And whether it was the warmth of the whisky or the fire or, oddly, the company, Karris found herself enjoying the storm.

The storm was subsiding by the time they finished their second whisky, a little light fighting through the clouds just at the horizon.