For someone so wary of barrowers, Isaiah's mother had been remarkably quick to allow the Obadiah family into her ballroom to assist with decorations. Sarai Obadiah and her brood had always been master gardeners, but their craft had seen breathtaking advancement with the addition of a magic line only three years prior. The scent of lace-flowers and juniper fern laced the grand ballroom, as out-of-season as the cascading walls of vegetation that framed the dance floor and lent a mystical kind of calm to its center. Word had it, Obadiah's youngest had already shown promise of inheritance at the tender age of two. Isaiah had no doubt Mahlon and Sarai would have themselves a second generation of barrowers strong enough to carry on the family business within the span of a decade.

Isaiah, for his part, could not tear his mind from the disappearances along the Talakova's edge. Growing plants was, comparatively, a minor power. He was sure the family's Crow Moon offerings constituted little more than a rabbit or a dove, but the up-front cost was what bothered him so insistently. The family's late matriarch was listed in Calis's formal registry as the life-trade for the contract. While Isaiah fully believed Bernice Obadiah would sacrifice herself at the end of her life in order to grant her progeny magic, tales of darker magical acquisition abounded in the Ring of Thirty.

"Your highness."

Jordan Obadiah. Isaiah donned his polite smile again and turned to greet them.

Jordan's clothing swished as they cut a smart bow. "Your highness, we were hoping to solicit your opinion on placement of the planters. Your mother is of the opinion that they will make the hall less open in their current position."

Isaiah's heart sank. His mother was home, then, and already commanding the details of a hall layout he'd been here since sunup to advise. He'd had the bulky planters arranged in a way that would quiet one corner of the hall. It would be solace in a crowded, noisy room, but of course his mother would see the arrangement and its intended purpose differently. To her, separation of the crowd ruined the appearance of grandeur she strived to maintain, and Isaiah was unwilling to risk the gambling wheel of responses he would face if he pushed back on this. Talk of compensations the day before had gone uneasily. His mother was concerned enough about action on the disappearances to let him draw more money from the treasury, at least. But he had more sensitive topics to raise today, and he wanted to maximize his chances of success.

"Take my mother's advice," he said. "She has final say in all arrangements."

He could hear Jordan's frown in their next words. "Pardon my argument, your highness, but your mother provided the opposite instructions when she hired us. Am I to tell my family that her word overrides yours, then?"

Isaiah's smile turned dry. "It usually does."

"You had excellent reasons for the current arrangement..."

"Her word is final." He wouldn't have outsiders—even well-meaning ones—compromising his tactical choices. "I apologize for the miscommunication."

Jordan's small sigh didn't escape him. "As you wish," they said, not unkindly, before turning and striding away. Isaiah could now hear his mother's voice across the hall. It would only be a matter of time before she broke from her command of the Obadiah family and came to find him, at which point he would have only a narrow window to introduce the thing he wanted to talk about before she took over the conversation. The sharp click of her heels on tile cut that thought short. Isaiah braced for her arrival.

"There you are, love," she declared as she rounded the corner of the grand staircase. "Lurking in corners as usual, I see."

"I've been here all day."

"Yes, I know." Her voice softened on the words. Then that tone vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "Now, do you have a moment?"

Isaiah swallowed hard. "I do. And I have something to speak with you about as well."

"So long as it's quick. Come, let us find a quieter place."

Her voice dipped mid-sentence as she glanced over her shoulder, a shard of more familiar distrust in her words. She did not want to speak in the presence of barrowers. Isaiah followed her wordlessly into the hallway, to a room where his parents often greeted messengers. His mother checked the hallway, then shut the door. Isaiah opened his mouth to get a foothold in the conversation first.

His mother was faster. "I will be in attendance for the rest of the preparations while your father is out," she said. "I have some thoughts about the layout that I hope to put to the decorators. Your father and I also had a conversation last night about some stipulations that we think would be reasonable for this event."

The cloud of anxiety in Isaiah's chest clenched like a fist.

"First," said his mother, "is that Pekea will not be allowed in the ballroom during the grand event. In fact, we think it would be optimal if she was crated in your room for its duration, to ensure she does not get up to any mischief that might give our guests a bad impression of the evening. This is too important an event for your future, and for the positioning of our family in local diplomacy."

He had known this was coming, and it was true that Pekea's reputation with suitors was less than ideal. But that didn't make it sting any less. Isaiah bit back a panicky feeling and nodded. Navigating the ballroom without Pekea was not an issue. Navigating the ball itself would be harder, and would put him into greater reliance on either his parents or the women he wooed. He was sure his parents saw both of those as advantageous. It was not out of the question, either, that this was a deliberate move on his mother's part. Pekea was a grounding presence for him, without which he already knew he tended to talk back less. It was a weakness he hated himself for, and which he had no doubt his mother would exploit if she knew.

His mother had already steamed onward, dictating how he should dress, how and where he should take his dinner, and other trivialities that would script his one night of half-freedom to the tiniest detail. Isaiah made a desperate effort to commit them to memory to spare himself having to go through this talk again, but he knew it was hopeless. When his mother paused for breath, he could almost hope it was over.

"And lastly," she said, with a gravity that dashed his hopes of escape. "Your father and I were hoping to speak with you about the importance of this event. Not that we think you might have forgotten, but we are both concerned about leaving anything to chance, as you can understand."

He would only ever understand from their perspectives, but that was all that mattered with her.

"This morning, we received a letter," said his mother. "From Madeira."

Isaiah's attention snapped back from the footsteps of servants or decorators passing by outside the door.

"It was a celebration of the recent royal marriage in Drevo." Nothing serious, then, but he could see where this was going. "Madeira believes quite strongly in the tradition of lineage, so you can imagine Drevo's steps in that direction have set a standard for the other allied nations on this side of the Talakova. We are lagging behind that standard. Your father and I are greatly concerned about the political implications of such a lag."

With Madeira and its far neighbor Drevo already pointing fingers over the disappearances along their own borders, it was only inevitable that a realm with perceived problems of succession—real or imagined—might risk being removed from allyship as unable to prove its strength of leadership. Madeira in particular held strong beliefs in this direction. Not about succession as Isaiah's parents liked to interpret, but that no realm could be adequately ruled by one person alone. In his secret thoughts, Isaiah suspected this condition could be met just as easily with a platonic social partnership as with marriage in the traditional sense, but his parents were wedded to the tradition that had brought them together in their day.

The irony became doubly apparent when they laid out their marriage stipulations. It didn't matter who he picked, so long as it was someone. No condition on compatibility. No condition on fitness to co-rule. If he were interested in physical attractiveness, he could well have picked the most attractive woman in the land over one who would make sound decisions from the second throne, and his parents would not have batted an eye. That chafed more than anything.

His mother solidified this a moment later. "It is imperative, then, that you come out of this ball with a way forward on the topic of marriage. You do not need to make your choice immediately, but we do expect you to find candidates and to follow up with them afterward, so that this whole affair keeps moving in a favorable direction. I would like to see a letter like Drevo's going out from this realm within the span of half a year."

The addition of a timeline hit like a punch to the stomach. Isaiah swallowed hard and nodded.

His mother's voice softened. "I hope you know your father and I are very proud of you."

Isaiah felt the heat of her hand a moment before it touched his cheek. He jerked his head away. That threw off his mother for a moment, and he steeled himself for a wounded response. But she pushed onward. "You know, I never thought I would love your father when we first met. It was at a ball just like this one, and I swore up and down that I would not pick the way my parents wanted me to... but that man just swept me off my feet. I will always wish the same for my son."

Then treat me like it, echoed in Isaiah's mind. He would never say it. He would never say so many things that their sheer quantity piled up inside him until angry tears pricked his eyes. He kept his mouth shut. He was not like her, but she would never understand, if she spared him the attention to listen. And even if she understood, it would not matter. He did not matter. His feelings would always come second to "stability"—to appearances—and for all the years he'd had that made known to him, it still dug a deeper hollow in his chest than even his mother's anecdote.

He knew his feelings didn't matter. He just wished for a partner who would not ask too much of him, and his chances of finding that seemed to grow slimmer with each conversation in the palace halls, or trip to the market just to hear the lowland people whisper.

The silence dragged on too long. At last, his mother's feet shifted. "I should be going, then," she said crisply, and made to move back towards the ballroom. She reached the door before Isaiah mustered enough of his shredded willpower to find his voice.

"Wait," he said, and hastily added, "mother, please," when the air stiffened with her dislike of being spoken to so directly. "I have something to talk to you about, too."

"Will it be quick?"

"It's about relations with the other realms."

That gave her pause. "Is it about Drevo's announcement?" she said coolly, a tone that indicated she would take no confrontation on the matter. "Or about Madeira?"

"Neither." Isaiah's heartbeat was already running away on him, but this was for the disappearances in the lowlands. He had to try. "About Varna."