( Elizabeth Aurelius POV )
I slept until the sun was fully up, which had not happened since we left Zenith.
When I opened my door, the implementation schedules were waiting on the floor outside it in a neat stack. Someone had tied them with a piece of string that had clearly been borrowed.
The steward on the landing cleared his throat. "Lord Vortex left those with me last night, Your Highness. With instructions."
"What instructions?"
He looked as though he would have preferred not to say. "That they were not to be read before breakfast, under any circumstances, and that if you asked, I was to tell you he said so."
I looked at the string. It was a bootlace. I decided not to ask whose.
I ate breakfast first. I want that recorded somewhere, because it was a small act of obedience and I would like credit for it.
***
The old records room was at the top of the west tower, up a stair so narrow that my two guards had to climb it one behind the other.
