‘So, what matters has the Assembly sent you to me about?’ His voice drifted from some other room as she entered. The interior of the embassy had once been dominated by a few items of Collegiate furniture, making her wonder just how grand Galltree’s enterprise had originally been, when he arrived here decades before. Everything had now been shoved back against the wall, though, and mostly shunted together into one corner, so as to leave as much open space as possible. The windows were thrown open to try and counterbalance the heaviness of the stone walls, and those walls were hidden behind light hangings in tans and faded reds. The overall impression was that Galltree seldom thought much about his original home.

He bustled back in, even then, carefully holding a steaming pot and a little tripod, and set them up in the centre of the floor, as though he was going camping. He sat down, with remarkable ease for a man of his years, and gestured for her to join him. Everything about him, and about her surroundings, was subtly off, with nothing working as she expected, and she felt obscurely threatened, keeping a hand on her rapier hilt for comfort. In the corner of her eye was the suggestion of spectres waiting for their moment: her doubts and fears in a grey robe, with a blank-eyed, accusing face.

‘My name is Tynisa Maker,’ she told him. ‘I’m Stenwold’s ward.’

He nodded amiably, as if he had expected no less. ‘I knew that Master Maker would not forget Collegium’s most far-flung outpost. He sends word?’

Galltree’s expression was painfully earnest, and Tynisa took a moment to reorder her words. She was no emissary, yet surely she would secure an audience more swiftly if everyone assumed she was. She would never have to claim it as a fact, when Galltree already seemed to have made the assumption. ‘I wish an audience with Prince Shah,’ she told him.