Instead, she held it tighter, felt the pulse of it against her palm like a thrush's heartbeat. Perhaps Furis knew that Lilika would need every tool at her disposal to keep her charge safe, and it was he who had given this to her. Had made Sannette pass it on talon to talon, all in order to keep Silviana from evil.

  Brother Milos would not have agreed, but then, he was a man, and one bound tightly in rules. He was blinded by them and Lilika was not. She would pray for guidance and a vision of the future, and she would know whether or not to pass on Sannette's gift.

  *

  Nine years ago, Lilika's rooms had been almost bare. Functional, clean and furnished only with the most basic necessities of her position as the guardian-carer of the young Lady Silviana. Back then the duke's daughter had been nothing more than a squalling, pinch face infant, her head squeezed out of shape, her skin greasy with vernix. Lilika had seen newborn infants before, and she was well aware of how hideously disfigured they looked on entering the world, but some part of her had half expected this child to be born cleaner, prettier, as though magic and death would have elevated her.

  The rooms were filled now. Years of slowly accumulated goods. Gifts of status, wardrobes built up from the remnants of the duchess's old clothes. Lilika had bought herself trinkets from the Fair of the Goat that came every year through the mountains, had slowly filled her meagre shelves with actual books. She'd never been stupid, even when she'd been near illiterate. And Lilika had always been quick to learn new things.

  "I was never content," Lilika said to the tapestried walls, and shivered. "I wanted too much, and it was my downfall." It was true. She should have been satisfied with what she had. Plucked from the throng of women who served the duke and duchess, elevated beyond all understanding to the side of a woman who had shone like the sun on the face of the great forests

  And over time, a confidant to one.

  And over time, a mistress to the other.

  She had stood between the sun and the moon.

  Lilika took a soft tasselled pillow of faded velvet and placed it on the floor so that she could kneel before the glazed picture of Furis. It had cost her near a year's wages and there was nothing in the room that was worth more. All her belongings together, books included — did not cover the cost of this one thing. The painting had been her first true purchase with the money she'd earned in the duke's employ.

  She swallowed and covered her eyes with the palms of her hands, as though scared to look on the portrait and see it looking back at her, equal measures of pity and contempt. "Forgive me," she whispered, then stood rapidly and placed a fine white veil over the painting, over Furis' bull head, his black stare.

  Working quickly, as though afraid that the god would appear in her rooms in person just to find out what she was doing, Lilika drew a small brass mirror out from under her bed and spat a pearly gobbet of froth which she smeared quickly over the surface with one finger. She whispered as she worked, a hurried incantation that she'd last used before Silviana had even been born. The years hadn't dimmed her memory, the spell too tangled up in the pathways of her mind, sharp as brambles. She pricked her thumb and squeezed a few drops onto the mirror's surface. The hazy reflection of her face was gone, replaced by a shimmering swirl of crimson and silver that moved in a way that blood and saliva never should.

  The spell hooked itself into her, pulling at the long untouched magic in her veins. She had sworn never to use witchcraft again, never to turn to The Three. She had given herself over to Furis in penance for her guilt in Belind's death. Lilika's heart hammered painfully against her ribs. It felt like something that no longer belonged to her. "Show me," she whispered. "Quickly. I need to know."

  When she'd been little more than a girl come up from the nearby village to work in the palace citadel, she'd been desperate to know what her future would bring her, though scrying was a notoriously vague practice. People tended to misread their futures, try to find ways to change them. She'd used the mirror then, as her mother had taught her, and her mother's mother, and all the ancient women of the village knew.

  It wasn't about changing things, Lilika thought. It was simply about knowing them. If she knew what was coming for her at least she would be able to face it. Not knowing was paralysing.

  She sucked in her breath. An image of a black tower was forming from the swirls and patterns. Lilika was familiar enough with the Penitent's Tower. A sudden ache pierced her side. The tower? Was that how she was going to end? The new duchess would find her out for a traitor, discover her place by the duke's side and do her best to destroy her.

  "No," Lilika hissed. "I will not let—" but the picture was drawing her in as though she were a crow flying to the high turret window, to see herself in penitent rags, ready for burning.

  The figure that coalesced before her was not her own.

  Lilika leaned back and smiled. There on her knees and wearing the white of court traitors was a woman she did not know. She'd seen the dead sister's portrait, of course. This woman was not that shining raven and milk beauty, but it was easy enough to see the similarities in the line of the jaw, the long, proud slope of the Petrell nose. Where Valerija Petrell had been sleek, this one was wild and rough haired, eyes amber brown instead of black. The woman in the mirror was no girlish slip of sixteen, so this day was still years to come.

  But come it would.

  The mirror woman went to the table where the remnants of her last meal waited for her. She ignored these and picked up a quill, carefully uncapping a small pot of ink, as she set to writing. Her confession, most likely. Or a will. There was no walking out of the tower and back into life. Wearing the whites meant she was ready for burning.

  The image hazed as the spell reached the end of its course, and the vision of the future duchess's ignoble end turned to smeared spit and blood on a scratched and ancient hand mirror. Lilika wiped the mirror clean and wrapped it back in its cloth before drawing back the veil on Furis' face.

  The god glared down at her, impassive, but Lilika's heart had lightened. True, for a moment she had wavered and gone back to the ways of her old gods, her old life, but surely Furis would understand why. "I exist only to serve you," she said, once she was back on her knees on the little prayer pillow. She covered her eyes again. "All I do, I do in your name, for your will. You will show me how to serve you." As he had once before, when he'd given her the duke's child and then taken it from her before it was old enough to be born. When he'd made sure she would be a perfect nurse to the duke's legitimate daughter when his wife had died. Always, Furis had given her exactly what she needed even when it seemed he took away. His vision was greater. Hers simple and small. She had to trust him. He had sent the hagstone to her through the dowager duchess, that much she was sure of now.

  If Furis was angered by her use of the old magic, she would be punished, beaten and brought back into line like a wayward beast. But wasn't it Brother Milos who said that all men served Furis with their talents? That the woodworker's skill was praise and servitude as much as the peasant's labour, or the scribe's. It stood to reason that the works of women served him too. Needlework and drudgery and magic. And if Furis disapproved of her works, he would strike her down.

  Lilika lowered her hands and bowed her head. "I will do all as you will it, and only as you will it," she said, lightened in spirit. She would either be praised or punished now, but whichever happened, she would know what she was meant to do. Furis would guide her. If he was pleased, then that would be her permission to use women's magic against the witch.

  It was time to meet the future wife of her duke. She would stand between her and the young lady Silviana and offer the girl what protection she could from this interloper. This traitor. And if she must arm herself with strange weapons to do it, so it would have to be.

  The future was, after all, a strange land.

  Teeth

  The first Jurien person to greet Marjeta to her face, to name her and offer her a smile, was a rose dark woman hardly taller than Marjeta herself, though she was a good many years older. Old enough to have had a baby and lost it. Old enough to be a wetnurse when the duke's daughter had been born.

  "You must be tired," the woman said, and her brown eyes were acorns still on the trees, her hands warm, her teeth little white beans. "You've travelled far." She ignored Areya as though the lady-in-waiting did not even exist. "My name is Lilika. I'm nurse-guardian to the Lady Silviana."

  Silviana. Duke Jurie's only daughter, and — in a matter of years — Marjeta's stepdaughter. The thought made her shoulders tense, her back ache. Instead of letting her fear show, Marjeta pushed herself to dip her head, to keep imperious. She was the future duchess, and who had come to greet her but a servant. No duke, no honour guard. Her father had arrived a few hours before, and, surely, he would have been met by the Duke Calvai. Perhaps the men were already engaged in rumours of war and sharing of battle stories. Her father had a new cannon at the Petrell castle, and every day he trained new men in using the modern lightweight wooden and iron rifles they had procured from their eastern neighbours.

  "Where is my father?" she asked, though something about the woman's touch despite her gentle smile made Marjeta shudder almost imperceptibly. She felt like blood and magic, distant and deadly.

  Lilika removed her hand from Marjeta's shoulder with a jerk, frowning. "Are you ill?"

  "No." Marjeta turned from the woman and snapped her fingers at her maid Areya and the servants with her. "I am never ill." She gestured for them to bring her private kists — the rest were to be left to Calvai. Her father would hand them over, but he would not get the chance to pass her on like one of them. "Show me my rooms."

  A shadow passed over Lilika's face, a flitted darkness that hinted at disgust and irritation, and then it was gone, and her smile was back. She curtsied low and deep, her head bowed. "Of course, if the Lady Marjeta Alis Petrell would follow me, we have a suite of rooms prepared for you. The duke hopes that it will be to your satisfaction."

  Marjeta said nothing. How could anything be satisfying here? It was colder than the touch of a drowned ghost girl, the stones black, the glass windows black with the reflections of storms, the sky blacker still. Even the huge twin hearth of the Jurie high hall — big enough to drive two chariots in side by side and roaring with huge fires — did nothing to cut the chill of the air. She followed the nursemaid Lilika's back, gaze fastened on her gown of forest brown stitched with golden leaves of oak and trimmed with white rabbit fur. A decent set of dresses. Perhaps a bit too fine for a servant, even one whose charge was the duke's only heir. Marjeta scowled.

  At least in Petrell she had known her place. She'd had to do her duties as a Petrell heir, of course, but she'd also had freedom that she'd understood. She could run and scavenge in the wild forests and play along the lake and river shores. She could steal bread from the kitchen cooks, who would only wink and shoo her on kindly, and she could light fires in the forests and burn rabbit meat and eat with her fingers if she so cared, as long as she'd been dressed in the right clothes at the right time, she'd had space of her own to carve out in her own manner. Now all that was gone, and she was in a world where she no longer knew the paths. She'd been a last daughter, a salamander in a house of magic and mirrors. Here, she was both a Duchess and Not, an ill-made replacement part.

  Stop it. Marjeta drew herself straighter and walked with careful determination, her head very high. Her appearance was her only armour. There was nothing else to defend her here. You are not afraid.

  Duke Calvai Jurie's great bear symbol was everywhere from the rearing black silhouette on the flags to the bear skins that seemed to cover every surface she looked at. There was even the immense head of a monstrous beast of a bear hanging above the fires in the great hall. A bear so big that it must have stood as high as a dragon when it lived. They were all reminders that she was an outsider.

  A salamander in a bear's den. But the Three sometimes took the form of bears, and Marjeta let that thought warm her, even if it was only the smallest trace of safety and familiarity. She tried to pay attention to the layout of the citadel as much as she could, but either it was built in a series of mazing twists and dead ends and curious turns especially to confuse invaders, or Lilika was purposefully leading her along some incomprehensible path. The servants carrying her things had begun to huff softly by the time Lilika drew up outside a wide wooden door trimmed with gold plated hinges and latticework.

  "This will be yours, my lady." Lilika dropped a curtsy before unlocking the door with a great iron key she wore hooked at her belt. She pushed the door open and ushered Marjeta to step into her new living area.

  Trembling a little with a mixture of travel exhaustion and the strangeness of her new surroundings, Marjeta brushed past Lilika and entered the darkness.

  It took Lilika only a moment to light the candles in their sconces, and for the room to be revealed in a flickering of gold and yellow. The air smelled faintly of dust and mould, and over that, of rushes and sweet herbs. It was obviously a place long deserted, newly cleaned out for her arrival.

  Inside was a revelation. Not one room, with its space only for the four-poster bed and the wardrobe and little tables, but a suite of rooms. One after the other, the walls lavishly decorated, each with its own vast hearth. The floors were thick with woollen carpets, tufted to look like grass and starred with woven flowers like chamomile. Marjeta was used to her single chamber. Large spaces in the Petrell castle had been reserved for her mother and the ladies to work in. Here, she had a set of rooms that could fit the women of the Petrell court easily. Not just one table to work at, but desks for writing, desks for eating at, desks for playing games, a long empty table, carved and gilded and painted. The bed itself was near twice the size of the childhood bed that she and Val had shared. It was thick with rich indigo covers, deep enough to drown in. On the floor next to the bed was the ubiquitous bear skin, but this one taken from a bear of reddish gold, its back and head fur frosted almost white at the tips.

  There were chairs for sitting, chairs for reading, long velvet-cushioned chairs to stretch out on and nap. The whole air was one of ridiculous waste, of the kind of sumptuousness that was completely at odds with the bitter cold, the black woods, and the austerity outside. While beyond the thick stone walls the winds raged and the clouds gathered snow in their bellies, here everything was softened and warm and thick and safe. A bear's den. A duchess's den.

  One thing was missing, however. Or three, to be precise. The house idols and their altar were nowhere to be seen. Instead, one of the tables held a small white plinth, on which rested a single book. Marjeta recognized it as the holy book of Furis. It was disconcerting to see that held in high esteem, with no place for The Three. The reality was more unsettling than she'd expected.

  Marjeta turned round and round, taking in the suite's surprising excess. Was this because she was to be Calvai's wife one day? It didn't seem right that any mere guest would be treated to such luxury. What of her father's guest rooms — would they be the equal of this? Somehow, Marjeta doubted it. These were rooms meant to coddle a kept wife.

  "There is food and wine for you, Lady Marjeta. I will leave you to rest, and have the servants prepare you a bath—"

  "A bath — yes, please, that would be most welcome." Marjeta trailed one hand against the furs at the end of her bed. Soft and white, winter stoat, stitched into one immense covering. Her heart beat faster. What was Petrell to this? She'd had no idea of how poor her father's Duchy was in comparison. "Where is the Lady Silviana Jurie? I would like to meet her."

  Lilika smiled too sweetly. "That will come in time. There are preparations to be made." She stepped aside as the last of the men hauled Marjeta's kists and travel chests inside. "The duke will want to see you tonight at the welcoming feast. I'll have servants bring you warm water and something to eat." She dipped in another little curtsy. "We welcome you, Lady Marjeta. This is your home, and we are your people. We will do everything we can to ease your heart and body after such a long journey."

  "Thank you," Marjeta said, remembering something of the wariness her mother had drilled into her. Sixteen or not, her new place in this household was that of the future bride of the duke. It was in her best interests to remember this always. These people, kind as they might be, were not hers. "Your thoughtfulness is welcome. I will see Lady Silviana in due time, I am sure."

  She smiled at Lilika until the woman left, then dropped all pretence and fell back on the great bed. Above, her ceiling was an endless knotwork of intricate carvings and panels, the high walls muraled with a history of the Jurie line. "I feel like a mouse," she said to the vast bedroom.

  "You don't look like one," Areya retorted. She was already sorting kists, unpacking the gowns and clothes into the long, panelled cupboards, and stowing various trinkets and goods in the hinged benches that filled the deep recesses below the mullioned windows.