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Ronica was looking at her grand-daughter with new eyes.

What she saw there she found no more admirable in a woman than in a man.

A little predator, she was. Ronica wondered if it were already too late to do anything about it.

When had the pretty little girl metamorphosed into not a woman but a grasping, conquering female?

She found herself thinking that perhaps it was just as well Kyle had drawn Win trow back from the priesthood.

If one of them must inherit the Vestrit Trader legacy, she would rather it went to him than to Malta as she was now.

Her thoughts turned to Wintrow. She hoped the boy was doing well.

It would be more realistic, she knew, to hope he was surviving.

There had been one message from the monastery.

A certain Berandol had written to inquire after the boy, and ask when they might expect him to return.

Ronica had turned the missive over to Keffria. Let her answer it as she saw fit.

There were times when Ronica wanted to punish Keffria savagely for not having the spine to stand up to Kyle.

She wanted to force her to confront every bit of the pain that man had managed to cause in the few short months since Ephron had died.

Wintrow had been virtually kidnapped and forced into slavery on his own family ship.

Sa only knew what had become of Althea; sometimes that was the hardest for Ronica, to lie awake at night and wonder endlessly what had become of her wayward daughter.

Did her body rot in a hasty grave somewhere?

Did she live somewhere in Bingtown in dreadful circumstances, doing whatever she must to support herself?

This last Ronica doubted. She had made too many inquiries and received not even a titbit of gossip about her daughter.

If Althea lived, she had left Bingtown. Under what circumstances, though?

Bingtown was no longer the civilized place it had been but five years ago.

These newcomers had brought all sorts of vices with them, and very contagious attitudes toward both servants and women.

The newcomers were mostly men. She did not know how they treated their women at home, but the women in their households now were servants only nominally different from slaves.

And slaves were often treated as less than animals.

The first time Ronica had seen a newcomer man strike one of his servants in the face right there in the market, she had been shocked.

Not that the man had done it; there were ill-tempered tyrants among the Bingtown Traders as there were anywhere else, folk who lost their tempers with servants or kin and lashed out at them.

Usually they ended up with what they deserved: servants who stole and lied and did as little as possible.

But the servant in the market only cowered away from his master; he did not speak out at all, did not threaten to leave his employer or even complain it was an injustice.

And somehow by not speaking out on his own behalf, he made it impossible for anyone else to object.

One hesitated, wondering, did he perhaps truly deserve the blow?

Was he acknowledging his own fault in the matter by accepting it?

And so no one else spoke out for the man.

Now it had evolved that there were two classes of servants in Bingtown.

True servants, like Nana, paid a living wage and entitled to their own dignity and lives — for waiting on the Vestrits was only her job, not her life.

And the newcomers’ servants, who were no more than slaves, whose very existence was to please any whim of their owners.

It was not legal, but how did one go about proving a man was a slave and not merely a servant?

When asked, such servants immediately and fearfully asserted they were, indeed, servants whose wages were sent home to their families.

Many insisted they were content as they were, and had chosen their lives.

It always made Ronica a bit queasy to wonder what threats held them in such abject fearfulness.

Obviously the threats had been carried out more than once, for the slaves to so fear them.

‘Good day, Ronica Vestrit.’

She did not startle. She had that much poise.

Cerwin was before her, nodding his head in a gentleman’s bow to her.

She nodded gravely in return. ‘Good day, Cerwin Trell. I hope you enjoy our garden room. And if you enjoy the trumpet vine, perhaps Keffria can give you a cutting from it. As harsh as it may seem, we cut ours back quite severely to encourage it to bloom and to have a graceful shape.’

‘I see,’ he said, and she was sure that he did.

He thanked her and then followed Keffria from the room.

Malta and Delo, heads together, followed them.

Malta’s pent frustration showed in her flared nostrils and flat lips.

Clearly she had expected to get Cerwin alone, or at least in no more than the company of his sister.

To what end? Probably the girl herself did not know.

Possibly that was the most frightening thing about all this; that Malta had flung herself into it so aggressively with so little knowledge of the consequences.

And whose fault was that, Ronica was forced to ask herself as she watched them go.

The children had been growing up in her household.

She had seen them often, at table, underfoot, in the gardens.

And yet they had been, always, the children.

Not tomorrow’s adults, not small people growing towards what they must someday be, but the children.

Selden. Where was Selden, at this moment, what was he doing?

Probably with Nana, probably with his tutor, supervised and secure.

But that was all she knew of him. A moment of panic washed over her.

There was so little time, it might even now be too late to shape them.

Look at her own daughters. Keffria, who only wanted someone to tell her what to do, and Althea, who only desired that she do her own will always.

She thought of the numbers on her ledgers, that no act of mere will could change.

She thought of the debt she owed the Festrews of the Rain Wilds.

Blood or gold, that debt was owed. In a sudden wrenching of her perceptions, it was not her problem.

It was Selden’s and it was Malta’s, for were not they the blood that might pay the debt?

And she had taught them nothing. Nothing.

‘Mistress? Are you all right?’

She lifted her eyes to Rache. The woman had entered, gathered up the coffee things on a tray, then come to stand next to where her mistress stared black-eyed off into the distance.

This woman, a servant-slave in her own house, entrusted with the teaching of her grand-daughter.

A woman she hardly knew at all. What did her mere presence in the household teach Malta?

That slavery was to be accepted — was that the shape of things to come?

What did that say to Malta about what it meant to be a woman in the Bingtown society to come?

‘Sit down,’ she heard herself saying to Rache. ‘We need to talk. About my grand-daughter. And about yourself.’

‘Jamaillia,’ said Vivacia softly.

The word woke him and he lifted his head from the deck where he’d been sleeping in the winter sunlight.

The day was clear, neither cool nor warm, and the wind was leisurely.

It was that hour of the afternoon designated for him to ‘pay attention to the ship’ as his father so ignorantly put it.

He had been sitting on the foredeck mending his trousers and quietly conversing with the figurehead. He did not recall lying down to sleep.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rubbing his eyes.

‘Don’t be,’ the ship said simply. ‘Would that I could truly sleep as humans do, turning away from the day and all its cares. That one of us can is a blessing to us both. I only woke you because I thought you would enjoy seeing this. Your grandfather always said that this was the prettiest view of the city, out here where you cannot see any of its faults. There they are. The white spires of Jamaillia.’

He stood, stretched and then stared out across the blue waters.

The twin headlands reached out to surround the ship like welcoming arms. The city lined the coast between the steaming mouth of the Warm River and the towering peak of the Satrap’s Mountain.

Lovely mansions and estate gardens were separated from one another by belts of trees.

On a ridge behind the city rose the towers and spires of the Satrap’s Court.

Commonly referred to as the ‘upper city’ it was the heart of Jamaillia City.

The capital city that gave its name to the whole Satrapy, centre of civilization, the cradle of all learning and art, glistened in the afternoon sunlight.

Green and gold and white, she shone, like a jewel in a setting.

Her white spires soared higher than any tree, and so intensely white were they that Wintrow could not look at them without squinting.

The spires were banded with gold and the foundations of the buildings were rich green marble from Saden.

For a time Wintrow gazed out on it hungrily, seeing for the first time what he had heard of so often.