If not for a muddy skirt, I would have been dead like all the rest. Dead — or worse, perhaps.

The green overskirt was attached to one of Lisele’s bodices — an old one, to be sure, but I had remade it prettily enough — and I returned late from the herb gardens that day. There had been a hard rain the previous night; mud daubed my hem and my perfume was hedgewitchery, sweat, and crushed green things. I could not attend Lisele in this state, so I ducked into the kitchen for a slice of bread and a wet rag to work some of the mud off the green velvet before I ran through the corridors to change quickly into a primrose silk. The primrose would set off Lisele’s new pale-green gown, just arrived from the royal dressmakers yesterday, to perfection. She had been absolutely mad with impatience and anticipation.

The kitchen was a-chaos with preparations for the night’s feast, so Head Cook Amys gave me a slice of bread thick with eldrin jam and shooed me away. Fowl chattered in the cages attached to the wall, and a wooden tub full of dazed and writhing eels in well water sat by the cellar stairs.