“I sleep in a room by myself at home,” Antonia piped up.

Gwennie, daughter of the cook and the castle constable, had been destined for the kitchens by her mother, but herself had always intended to replace her father. Indeed, since her father had been so sick the past winter, she had taken over more and more of his duties, supervising the other servants, arranging accommodations for visitors to the castle, and keeping the accounts and the ledgers. Senior members of the staff had smiled indulgently, assuming it was only a temporary situation. Knowing Gwennie and her determination, I knew better.

“I’ll put her in the suite with the duchess’s daughters,” she announced, forestalling further argument-besides, the duchess’s daughters probably knew all about hair brushing. “They’ve just arrived, and they were very interested to learn you had a niece. And I’ve already told you, Wizard,” she finished loftily, “that in carrying out my duties I prefer the name of Gwendolyn.”

The duchess’s twin daughters, three years younger than King Paul, were delighted when I brought Antonia’s little bag to their suite-a doll’s smiling face poked out of the top of the bag. “We already said we could take care of the girl,” the twins told me. “So you don’t need to worry about your niece at all, Wizard. Oh, Gwennie, before you go, we’re going to need more towels.”

“Of course, my ladies,” she said with a respect she never showed me.

“We know an old man, set in his ways, doesn’t want youthful female companionship!” they added, going into giggles that I found highly inappropriate.

Antonia held onto my hand, looking up at them gravely. They had grown into handsome women in the last few years. Both the twins had inherited their father’s height, being very tall, but physically the resemblance between them stopped there. Hildegarde was blond like her father, whose principality she would someday inherit, and Celia was slim and dark-haired like her mother, after whom she would one day be duchess of Yurt. They had always shared a unanimity against outsiders, which when they were little had even taken the form of a secret language, but I had the feeling that as they grew up their personalities had begun to diverge.