Underneath, there were the stolen minutes. The notes through the connecting wall in the childhood shorthand only they could read. The conversations that happened in the back of the garden or in the space between one errand and the next, voices low, eyes on the corridor.
"The guard changes at the second hour," Sanna said, the second day, sitting beside Meeka at the writing desk in her room on the pretense of looking at correspondence together. "Terrin takes the east gate. He's been on the household staff for twelve years and he likes you."
"Everyone likes me," Meeka said, not without irony.
"He'll let you through if you ask him directly. Don't sneak. If you sneak he'll feel he has to say something. If you walk up and tell him you're going to meet someone he'll decide not to know anything
