Ranald hadn’t minded. By now, she knew he despised dealing with women’s affairs: broken engagements, unreturned dowries, children who needed to be claimed. Such matters were never settled, he’d once told her with his face was only marked by laugh lines. 

            Laveth had broken the seal. The message was both brief and startling. She is a witch, sprawled a bold, masculine hand, Burn her.

            “Your father wrote this?” Laveth asked.

            The girl met her eyes — there was a proud streak in her — and nodded yes.

            “What is your name?”

            “Mirella, daughter of Tallis Talylor and . . .  Norelle. My mother is dead, but my father is the First Man at the Shivelite Camp.”

            “I see.”

Laveth slipped the note between the folds of her gown and regarded her. Mirella was barely into womanhood, the breasts beneath the threadbare gown were hard and new, her manner guileless. She was trying not to gawk at the rich tapestries along the walls or the sunlight shimmering on leaded glass, even as her future was being weighed.