In the morning she tucked the book under her arm as if it had no power over her, and took it back to the House. There were other books to read, and she still needed to know as much as she could about outblood Heirs. The fearful little voice that had driven her to keep reading the night before had fallen silent; what she now wanted to know was if there was a way for a Chalice to say “sorry, I’m busy” to an outblood Heir who wanted to waste her time.

When the shadow fell again across the door of the library, she gave an involuntary shiver, nearly a spasm, of revulsion—not again! But it wasn’t the Heir. It was the Grand Seneschal.

It was no good reminding herself that a Chalice had only to stand for a standing Master; she had scrambled to her feet before she’d thought anything but uh-oh. Once standing all her possible ceremonial gestures deserted her and she merely blinked at him and tried not to worry. The Grand Seneschal did not like the library. This was a fact well known to the Housefolk, who also knew they were therefore unlikely to be caught up for it if the books were not tended properly. The result was that Mirasol had to wipe the dust, and occasional spiders, off almost every book she took down. Fortunately the House cats had no such reservations and there were no mouse nests (at least that Mirasol had found) behind decapitated bindings. She stood and blinked some more. If the Grand Seneschal had come to the library there must be some unexpected urgency for the Chalice. Uh-oh.

But he only stood in the doorway and looked at her while she stood and looked at him. She was tired—she had had a very late night the night before—and she always had trouble dragging herself out of anything she was reading back into the real world, perhaps because reading was still difficult for her, or perhaps because, since she had become Chalice, she liked the real world less than she had. Eventually she tried a small bow. She’d never known him not to address her with grimmest formality, and here he was only standing there, as if he did not know how to begin. She finally thought of a suitable gesture, and touched her fingertips together and held her hands out toward him, in the ritual giving of first speech to another.

Still he hesitated. At last he said, in a curious, almost jerky way, as if the words were ripped out of him, as if he had not chosen to speak at all, “I had thought you…concurred in my choice of Master. In my attempt to bring our Master home. Even that you welcomed him. That despite his formidable priesthood his true blood as the younger brother of the former Master was proof that he was yet best for our demesne….”

She was so amazed at the Grand Seneschal saying I and my and you to her that it took her a moment to translate what he was saying. The Grand Seneschal had never spoken to her directly before; he spoke forbiddingly and exclusively in the third person when he had to address her at all, and had never—she felt—let it be anything but clear that he only addressed her because she had somehow, incredible as it seemed, become Chalice, and the Grand Seneschal was, unfortunately, too often compelled to address the Chalice. And now he spoke to her directly—and as if in great grief.

In his choice of Master? Those very early days of her Chalicehood were vague in her memory, with an overwhelming confusion and disbelief that even in retrospect made her wince and wish to avoid them. The Grand Seneschal’s letter had already been written and sent by the time she had begun to bear Chalice to the gatherings of the Circle, but even in her dazed and muddled state she’d been aware that not all the other Circle members had agreed with the Grand Seneschal’s decision. She could only remember hearing Prelate and Sunbrightener say as much aloud, but she was sure they were not the only ones. Perhaps the Grand Seneschal had been in the minority—he might, she thought, almost amused, be the only one, and had won his victory by mere force of character. The Grand Seneschal ranked third in the Circle hierarchy, after the Master and the Chalice, but he could not overbear the other nine—unless they let him.

She had been surprised to discover that the Grand Seneschal had written to the priests of Fire, because it was not a level-headed, dispassionate thing to do. In other circumstances it might have made her like him. But there had been no level-headed thing to do, because the Master should not have died with no Heir. What else was there to do but seek his nearest blood relative?

How could the Grand Seneschal think she did not support their Master?

She dropped her hands. “But—I do—I would have no other Master.” She glanced at the book she had been reading, much as she had done when Horuld had interrupted her the day before; but she was not thinking that she wished to dismiss the Grand Seneschal because he disturbed her, only that she had not yet found a way to dismiss the Heir if he disturbed her again.

“It is all over the demesne that you spent the day with the Heir yesterday.”

“The day,” she said, appalled. “It was two hours—it felt like a century—if it had been an entire day I—I would have run away from Willowlands before sunset.” She did not think of how irresponsible (and impossible) a thing this was for a Chalice to say; only how best to express her revulsion against the Heir.

Something that might almost have been a smile appeared on the Seneschal’s face, but disappeared again immediately, and the grief seemed to deepen. He did not sound accusatory when he spoke, only sad. “And that you held your hands clasped, as Chalice.”

“Ye-es,” she said. “Yes—but I—I did not want to be Mirasol with that—man,” although as she said her own name she wondered if the Seneschal even knew it, or if he might think that Mirasol was some strange low slang common among minor woodskeepers.

As if he did not know what else to do, the Seneschal wandered over to the table next to the one she stood beside, pulled out a chair and sat heavily down. She was clearly not bearing Chalice, so anyone might sit down in her presence without consequences, but this was still as out of character as the I and the you. Also the Seneschal always behaved with great precision, and he sat down with a thud, as if exhausted.

“I feared it might be something like this,” he murmured. Louder he said, “Why did you not merely send him away?”

“Send him away?” she said. “Send away the Heir? I only wish I could—that I knew how.” She looked at the book again. “I was hoping some book would tell me how, in case he comes back.”

“How could you send away the Heir?” the Grand Seneschal said, almost gently. “By telling him to go. You, Mirasol, are Chalice. He is only Heir.”

“But—”

“By spending time in his company—as Chalice, as you did—you were giving him your favour—your warranty. He will have gone away to send word to the Overlord that the Chalice of Willowlands supports him. Do you not know—you spend so much time reading”—and in his voice at last was the tone she was used to hearing when the Grand Seneschal spoke to her—“can you possibly not know that there is a move to put our Master aside and set the Heir in his place?”

“No!” she cried—although she had feared as much. “No, no—how could you think it? I would myself die, if it were necessary, to keep our Master; but the only story of a Chalice doing so, it was at Stonehollow, twelve generations ago, and it did not work and so…” Without thinking, she turned to glance up at the shelf where the book that had told her that story stood, and when she turned back again she was suddenly angry. “Reading. Yes. Yes, I do spend a tremendous amount of time reading—I should have known that I was giving that lizard Horuld my blessing? How was I to know it, please? When did I serve my apprenticeship, and with whom? Who speaks to me at all, since I became Chalice, except those who must?” She glared down at the sitting Seneschal. “I am far too strange and grand now for my old friends, even if they knew that a Chalice might send away an Heir with no form but the bare words of command—which I rather doubt they do know. All I have is reading. The books do not scorn or avoid my company, and they tell me plainly what they know.”