ADAEZE POV
The schedule was on the desk. One page, written in a hand that was not Zara's, probably a secretary's, listing three things for the morning and two for the afternoon and all five of them were things Adaeze could not do.
The first was a meeting with a Lady Corren to discuss what the archive labeled a longstanding grievance over a land boundary. The second was attendance at a small breakfast gathering in the west hall where Duchess Seran would also be present. The third was a private conversation with someone named Lord Hevin whose file in the archive was mostly Lord Voss's handwriting and smelled like a setup even from a page away.
She set the schedule down.
She could not do any of these. Not yet. Not without knowing enough about the specific histories involved to avoid saying the wrong thing, and right now her knowledge of Zara's relationships was broad but not deep. She knew the structure. She did not know the texture. And texture was exactly what would get her caught.
She called for the secretary.
The woman who appeared was middle-aged, neat, with the particular expression of someone who had learned to have no expression at all around Zara Voss. She stood in the doorway with a small ledger in her hands and waited.
"Cancel the morning," Adaeze said.
The secretary blinked. Just once. "My lady?"
"The Corren meeting and the breakfast. Cancel them. Send apologies. Say I am unwell."
"And Lord Hevin, my lady? He was quite insistent about the timing."
"Tell him I will reschedule when I am feeling better."
Another blink. The secretary wrote something in her ledger with the careful speed of someone doing their job while also processing something unexpected. "Of course, my lady. Is there anything you need? Shall I send for the physician?"
"No. Just the cancellations."
"Yes, my lady." She hesitated for just a fraction of a second. "Should I also cancel the afternoon appointments?"
"Not yet. I'll decide after midday."
The secretary nodded and left and Adaeze stood in the middle of the room and let out a slow breath. One problem handled. Four hundred and thirty-seven remaining, roughly.
She needed air. The chambers had been closed since before she woke up and the air in them was stale and faintly sweet in a way she did not like, like something had been burning in here beyond the papers on the vanity. She needed to think and she could not think properly in a closed room. She had never been able to.
She found a coat in the dressing room, plain and dark, and put it on over the morning dress she had picked out and went into the corridor and turned left toward the east wing because the archive said the gardens were accessible from there.
The east corridor was longer than it looked on the mental map she had built. Stone walls, high windows, a runner of dark carpet that had seen better decades. Two servants passed her going the other direction and both of them dropped their eyes immediately, that specific quick look-away that meant they were used to being invisible around her. She did not say anything to them. She was learning that silence was safer than anything she could attempt right now.
The garden door was heavy and opened onto a path of flat grey stone that led between low hedges toward a wider space with actual grass and actual sky and the first real sunlight she had felt since waking up in this body. She stopped walking and just stood in it for a moment. Let it sit on her face. It was not warm exactly, more cool than anything, but it was real and it was outside and that mattered.
She found a stone bench set back from the main path, half-hidden by a hedge that had grown past the point anyone bothered trimming it, and sat down.
Right. Rules. She needed rules.
She started with the obvious ones. Do not escalate. If someone came at her with aggression, Zara's default was to come back harder. She could not do that because she did not know the specific history of any given confrontation and coming back wrong was worse than not coming back at all. So. Do not escalate. Withdraw. Cite illness or fatigue or any of the dozen things the archive showed Zara sometimes used as cover.
Do not volunteer information. Zara talked. A lot. She used information as ammunition and she fired it early and often. Every time Adaeze opened her mouth to say something she had not been asked she was risking a gap the other person could fall into. So. Say less. Ask questions instead of making statements. Let the other person fill the space.
Mirror the room. Whatever energy came at her, reflect it back slightly muted. Not a perfect copy, that looked strange, but close enough that nobody felt the wrongness she was carrying.
She was working through the third rule when she heard footsteps on the stone path.
She did not look up immediately. Listened first. Light steps, not a guard's walk, and a small hesitation every few paces that said whoever it was kept thinking about turning back.
"Zara?"
The voice was soft. Young. She looked up.
The girl standing on the path was maybe nineteen, twenty at most. Round face, dark hair pulled back loosely, a dress that was well-made but not the kind of thing you wore when you wanted to be noticed. She was looking at Adaeze with an expression that was caught somewhere between wanting to come closer and expecting to be told to leave.
Thessaly. Zara's younger sister. The archive had her listed under family, a brief entry, mostly noting her as politically insignificant and socially quiet. Lord Voss apparently considered her a disappointment in the specific way men like him considered daughters who refused to be useful.
"Thessaly," Adaeze said.
Thessaly's whole body shifted slightly. Not relaxing exactly. More like she had been bracing for something and the first impact had not come yet and she did not quite trust that.
"I did not know you were out here," Thessaly said. "I can go. I usually come to the garden at this time but I can find somewhere else if you want to be alone, I do not mind, really."
She was already starting to back up.
"Sit down," Adaeze said.
Thessaly stopped. Looked at her. "Sorry?"
"Sit down. There is room." Adaeze moved to one end of the bench and gestured at the other half.
Thessaly came forward slowly, like the bench might change its mind, and sat at the very edge of it with her hands folded in her lap and her back straight in the way of someone who had learned not to take up space. The look on her face was something Adaeze did not expect and could not quite look at directly. Hope. Bewildered and fragile and clearly not something she was used to feeling around her older sister. Like she had been handed something nice and was already preparing for it to be taken back.
Adaeze looked at the hedge instead.
"How long have you been coming to this garden?" she asked.
Thessaly blinked. "Since I was twelve. The gardener used to let me help with the hedges when they still trimmed them." A small pause. "Nobody comes to this corner much. That is why I like it."
"It's a good corner," Adaeze said.
Silence. But not the hostile kind. Thessaly was looking at the hedge too now, and there was something about her, in the quiet, that Adaeze was filing away. She was not actually nervous the way a person was nervous around a threat. She was nervous the way a person was nervous around something they wanted very badly and had stopped letting themselves want.
"You cancelled the Corren meeting," Thessaly said after a bit. Not accusatory. Just noting it.
"Word travels fast."
"Lady Corren's chambers are near mine. Her secretary came past in quite a state." A pause. "She will be relieved, honestly. She has been dreading it."
Adaeze looked at her. "Lady Corren was dreading meeting with me?"
Thessaly hesitated. Chose her words. "The last three times have not gone well for her."
That was honest. More honest than careful, actually. Adaeze found herself recalibrating. Thessaly was not just sweet and overlooked. She was paying attention. She noticed the Corren secretary's state. She knew the history of the Corren meetings. She tracked things, quietly, from her corner of the palace where nobody watched her do it.
That was useful. That was genuinely, specifically useful.
"How are the afternoon preparations going?" Adaeze asked. "For the court gathering next week."
Thessaly turned to look at her fully for the first time. "You want to know about the preparations?"
"I am asking, aren't I."
A beat. Then Thessaly started talking. Carefully at first and then with more ease as nothing bad happened, giving her a clean, clear picture of which noble families were confirmed to attend, which were sending regrets, what the seating arrangements currently looked like and why two specific lords were going to be a problem if they ended up at the same table. She had clearly been watching this court for years from her quiet corner and she had retained all of it.
Adaeze listened and asked two questions and listened more and by the end of it had a better picture of next week's social landscape than the archive had given her.
Thessaly stood to go eventually, smoothing her dress, still with that careful look of someone holding something gently.
"I should get back before they notice I am gone," she said. "Father's household manager has been sending notes about schedules."
"Of course," Adaeze said.
Thessaly took three steps down the path and then stopped. Stood still for a moment. Then she turned back around and when she looked at Adaeze her expression was different. Stripped of the careful hopefulness. Just direct and a little raw.
"Sister," she said quietly. "Whatever you are doing differently." She stopped. Started again. "Do not stop."
Adaeze held her gaze and said nothing.
Thessaly glanced down at her hands, then back up. Her voice dropped lower. "Father is coming to court," she said. "He arrives in three days."
And then she turned and walked back up the path and disappeared through the garden door and the sound of it closing behind her sat in the quiet like a full stop at the end of a very bad sentence.