“Come now,” Grable said, smiling with a wide, uneven smile. “You can tell me.”

“It’s true,” Vivenna said. “Being royal is about more than just blood. It’s about lineage and the holy calling of Austre. My children will not have the Royal Locks unless I become queen of Idris. Only potential heirs have the ability to change their hair color.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” Grable said. He leaned forward, ignoring her and focusing on Denth. “I don’t care about your caravans, Denth. I want to buy the girl from you. How much?”

Denth was silent.

“Word of her is spreading about town,” Grable said. “I see what you’re doing. You could move a lot of people, make a lot of noise, with a person who seemed to be of the royal family. I don’t know where you found her, or how you trained her so well, but I want her.”

Denth stood up slowly. “We’re leaving,” he said. Grable’s bodyguards stood up too.

Denth moved.

There were flashes—reflections of sunlight, and bodies moving too fast for Vivenna’s shocked mind to follow. Then the motion stopped. Grable remained in his chair. Denth stood poised, his dueling blade sticking through the neck of one of the bodyguards.

The bodyguard looked surprised, his hand still on his sword. Vivenna hadn’t even seen Denth draw his weapon. The other bodyguard stumbled, blood staining the front of his jerkin from where—shockingly—Denth seemed to have managed to stab him as well.

He slipped to the ground, bumping Grable’s table in his death throes.

Lord of Colors . . .. Vivenna thought. So fast!

“So, you are as good as they say,” Grable said, still looking unconcerned. Around the room, other men had stood. Some twenty of them. Tonk Fah grabbed another handful of fried things, then nudged Vivenna. “We might want to get up,” he whispered.

Denth pulled his sword free of the bodyguard’s neck, and the man joined his friend, bleeding and dying on the floor. Denth slammed his sword into its sheath without wiping it, never breaking Grable’s gaze.

“People speak of you,” Grable said. “Say you appeared out of nowhere a decade or so back. Gathered yourself a team of the best—stole them from important men. Or important prisons. Nobody knows much about you, other than the fact that you’re fast. Some say inhumanly so.”

Denth nodded toward the doorway. Vivenna stood nervously, then let Tonk Fah pull her through the room. The guards stood with their hands on their swords, but nobody attacked.

“It’s a pity we couldn’t do business,” Grable said, sighing. “I hope you’ll think of me for future dealings.”

Denth finally turned away, joining Vivenna and Tonk Fah as they left the restaurant and moved out onto the sunny street. Parlin and Jewels hurried to catch up.

“He’s letting us go?” Vivenna asked, heart thumping.

“He just wanted to see my blade,” Denth said. He still seemed tense. “It happens sometimes.”

“Barring that, he wanted to steal himself a princess,” Tonk Fah added. “He either got to verify Denth’s skill or he got you.”

“But . . . you could have killed him!” Vivenna said.

Tonk Fah snorted. “And bring down the wrath of half the thieves, assassins, and burglars in the city? No, Grable knew he wasn’t ever in any danger from us.”

Denth looked back at her. “I’m sorry for wasting your time—I thought he’d be more useful.”

She frowned, noting for the first time the careful mask that Denth kept on his emotions. She’d always thought of him as carefree, like Tonk Fah, but now she saw hints of something else. Control. Control that was, for the first time since they’d met, in danger of cracking.

“Well, no harm done,” she said.

“Except for those slobs that Denth poked,” Tonk Fah added, happily feeding another morsel to his monkey.

“We need to—”

“Princess?” a voice asked from the crowd.

Denth and Tonk Fah both spun. Once again, Denth’s sword was out before Vivenna could track. This time, however, he didn’t strike. The man behind them didn’t seem much of a threat. He wore ragged brown clothing, and had a leathery suntanned face. He had the look of a farmer.

“Oh, Princess,” the man said, hurrying forward, ignoring the blades. “It is you. I heard rumors, but . . . oh, you’re here!”

Denth shot a look at Tonk Fah, and the larger mercenary reached out, putting a hand in front of the newcomer before he got too close to Vivenna. She would have thought the caution unnecessary had she just not seen Denth kill two men in an eyeblink. The danger Denth always talked about was slowly seeping into her mind. If this man had a hidden weapon and a little skill, he could kill her before she knew what was happening.

It was a chilling realization.

“Princess,” the man said, falling to his knees. “I am your servant.”

“Please,” she said. “Do not put me above others.”

“Oh,” the man said, looking up. “I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I left Idris! But, it is you!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“The Idrians in T’Telir,” the man said. “They say you’ve come to take the throne back. We’ve been oppressed here for so long that I thought people were just making up stories. But it’s true! You’re here!”

Denth glanced at her, then at Grable’s restaurant, which was still close behind them. He nodded to Tonk Fah. “Grab him, search him, and we’ll talk somewhere else.”

THE “SOMEWHERE ELSE” turned out to be a ragged dump of a building in a poor section of town about a fifteen minutes from the restaurant.

Vivenna found the slums of T’Telir to be very interesting, on an intellectual level at least. Even here, there was color. People wore faded clothing. Bright strips of cloth hung from windows, stretched across overhangs, and even sat in puddles on the street. Colors, muted or dirty. Like a carnival that had been hit by a mudslide.

Vivenna stood outside the shack with Jewels, Parlin, and the Idrian, waiting as Denth and Tonk Fah made sure the building wasn’t hiding any unseen threats. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling an odd sense of despair. The faded colors in the alley felt wrong. They were dead things. Like a beautiful bird that had fallen motionless to the ground, its shape intact, but the magic gone.

Ruined reds, stained yellows, broken greens. In T’Telir, even simple things—like chair legs and storage sacks—were dyed bright colors. How much must the people of the city spend on dyes and inks? If it hadn’t been for the Tears of Edgli, the vibrant flowers that grew only in the T’Telir climate, it would have been impossible. Hallandren had made an entire economy out of growing, harvesting, and producing dyes from the special flowers.

Vivenna wrinkled her nose at the smell of refuse. Scents were more vibrant to her now, too, much like colors. It wasn’t that her ability to smell was any better, the things that she smelled just seemed rich. She shivered. Even now, weeks after the infusion of Breath, she didn’t feel normal. She could sense the teeming people of the city, could sense Parlin beside her, watching the nearby alleys with suspicion. She could sense Denth and Tonk Fah inside—one of them appeared to be inspecting the basement.

She could . . .

She froze. She couldn’t feel Jewels. She glanced to the side, but the shorter woman was there, hands on hips, muttering to herself about being left with the “kids.” Her Lifeless abomination was beside her; Vivenna hadn’t expected to be able to feel it. Why couldn’t she feel Jewels? Vivenna had a sharp moment of panic, thinking that Jewels might be some twisted Lifeless creation. Then, however, she realized that there was a simple explanation.

Jewels had no Breath. She was a Drab.

Now that Vivenna knew what to look for, it was obvious. Even without her wealth of Breath, Vivenna thought she might have been able to tell. There was less of a sparkle of life in Jewels’s eyes. She seemed more grumpy, less pleasant. She seemed to put others on edge.