Audric bent over with another coughing fit, and Sergei placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Your cough is worsening again, Kraljiki,” he said. “I’ll have the healers make another potion for you, and perhaps we’ll have Archigos Ana see you tomorrow after the Day of Return ceremony. It’s a little early, but with the rains last month…”

“I’m better now,” Audric told him. “It’s just the damp air here in the hall.” The nearest e’teni had stopped her chant, her hands frozen in the middle of shaping the Ilmodo-the energy that fueled their magic. She was a young woman not much older than Audric; she blushed when she saw that Audric had noticed her, looked quickly away, and began her chant anew: the lamp set high on the wall bloomed into light as her hands waved in the Ilmodo patterns under it.

Audric’s chest was beginning to ache with the racking coughs. He hated being ill, but it seemed he was often sick. He’d been that way from the very beginning of his memories. If an illness were passing through the staff of the palais, he was certain to catch it; he was constantly assailed by coughing fits, by difficulty in breathing. Any physical exertion left him quickly exhausted and gasping. Yet somehow Cenzi had protected him from the outbreak of Southern Fever when he was four, though the illness had taken his older sister Marguerite, named for her famous great-matarh and primed to be the Kraljica on their vatarh’s death. Her state funeral-a long and somber ceremony-was one of his earliest memories.

It should be Marguerite standing here now, not him. Audric hoped this meant Cenzi had a plan for him.

He drew in a long breath and this time held back the cough that threatened. “There, you see,” he told Sergei. “Just the damp, and having to answer all the Maister’s damnable questions.”

“At least the maister’s questions have definite answers. The solutions for a Kraljiki are rarely so clear-cut, as you already know.” Sergei put his arm around Audric, and Audric leaned into the man’s embrace. “Trust ca’Rudka as your Regent,” his vatarh had whispered as he lay on his bed during that final day. “Trust him as you would me…”