They walked to the other end of Karila almost in a straight line. There, in a quiet square behind the Shuudan’s palace, a place overgrown with moss and ivy and trailing flowers of gold and pale blue, stood an old hawthorn tree bursting with white blossoms. Just at the point where the trunk of the tree met the branches, it looked like someone had grown the hawthorn into the shape of a high-backed chair. The shape hadn’t been carved out of the tree—that much was clear. It looked like a natural part of it, even down to the footrests and handrests.
In that chair sat Mirodara, the dendrite, sister of Llun the smith. Her eyes were closed, her head lolling in sleep that could have easily been mistaken for death. Voran hardly recognized her. She was thinned out, almost to her skeleton. Her hair w
