The Elysian Estate had acquired another prisoner by sunset. This was becoming a pattern. A very expensive pattern. I would need to have Bernard create a separate household category for emergency detainees, ritual criminals, compromised officials, rescued children, royal patients, and inconvenient foreign observers. The last one wasn't a household category yet, but I had the unpleasant feeling it might become necessary.
The thought alone offended me.
Father Lorian was placed in the lower ward room far from Marcellus, Vesren, Caldus, and the conductor. Not because he deserved comfort. He didn't. Rather, because his words had been taken from him in the Coronation Hall, and we didn't yet know whether the silence left in him could crawl into other people.
A man who'd lost his words should have been pitiable. He wasn't. He was evidence.
