Mercutio was wrong, and it turned out to be quite difficult to find out where the prophetess Vestaria Olano was staying. Bernicia guessed that the old woman had not walked far to reach the fire, so she started from the harbor and worked her way into the city, her escort trailing behind. She asked people on every block. Most were polite about saying no, especially the ones who recognized her, but many looked away and muttered darkly. The prophetess had clearly alarmed many Calyxians. And that, perhaps, was why she was hard to find, because she was lying low, or her family was hiding her. Bernicia had been searching for two hours before she got her first real clue. A fat barkeep with the forearm tattoos of an old oarsman said, “Yes, My Lady, I have seen her, around the button makers on Notion Street.”

  So it was off to Notion Street, where people were, if anything, even more given to dark muttering, but they finally found a woman who pointed to a certain door before she stomped off doing one of the best dark mutters Bernicia had heard all morning. She knocked on the door and waited. No answer. She knocked again, harder. Still no answer. Then her guard stepped up and pounded on the door with his staff. A minute later a middle-aged woman answered, prepared, it looked, to do some angry shouting. When she saw Bernicia she swallowed whatever she was going to shout, looking like she had forced down a toad. Bernicia left her guards on the street and took her maid Alyzza in with her. She was led upstairs to a small room where an old woman sat on a child-sized chair, huddled over a small iron brazier. The other woman left, trailing apologies.

  There was nowhere else to sit, so Bernicia squatted down on her heels in front of the old woman. The woman continued to stare at the brazier. Bernicia said, “Grandmother Olano, I am Bernicia Reliquay. I have come to speak to you about the words you shouted to the crowd on the night of the fire.”

  The prophetess raised her face, which was wrinkled and sunken in around her missing teeth. She said, “A lady, is it? What would a great lady like you want with a poor old woman like me?”

  “I may be rich,” said Bernicia, “but I am not wise. I have heard that you are. And that is its own kind of greatness.”

  “Tell that to my new neighbors. They think little of my great wisdom.”

  “You frightened them. You are lucky they did not beat you and throw you in the harbor, for saying such things while the people were struggling with a dangerous fire.”

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  “You wish to be frightened, too?”

  “I am not easily frightened.”

  “You lie. You are frightened now. You woke up frightened this morning. You will go to bed frightened tonight. You have lived your whole life in fear.”

  Bernicia felt as if she had been slapped, to have her own weakness thrown in her face by this stranger. She said, “What else do you see in me?”

  “Are you sure you want me to go on? Few enjoy the mirror I hold up to them.”

  “I must know.”

  The old woman looked into Bernicia’s eyes and then she said, “You go through your pretty little life choking on fear but doing your best to hide it. You are vain but struggle to hide that as well, because you fear that if people knew how much you admire yourself, they would hate you. You couldn’t stand that. Ever since your father died you have been afraid to trust anyone, sure that if you did, they would leave you like he did. There is something strange about your mother, too, although I cannot see what it is; at any rate it has been a long time since she was a real mother to you. You have great ambition but hide that as well, because you are afraid of failing and being mocked for it.” She stopped speaking then and refocused her wandering eyes on Bernicia’s face, as if struggling to read writing too small for aged eyes to focus on. Then she said, “But there is more in you. Something in your future. One day, if you can overcome your fear, you will do something great, something that will surprise everyone. It will especially surprise you. Beyond that are more forks in your path. It may be that you will be honored. But it may be that you will refuse to believe that you ever did any great thing and will die certain that you have failed, believing that everything you have worked for will go to ruin.”

  Bernicia let the hammer blows of these words pound her body. It was, she thought, no worse than many things she had told herself. She was used to being pounded with doubt. She said, “Grandmother, why do you believe the world is dead? Can you not look around you and see that life goes on?”

  “That is not what I see. Is it what you see? Look into yourself, into the fear with no name, and tell me you do not believe ruin is coming to your world.”

  “I see many things in myself. Fear, yes, but also hope.”

  “Then go out on a clear winter night and find the Scales that hang in the stars. Use them to weigh your fear against your hope. Come back to me, if I am still alive, and tell me which way they tilted.”

  She turned her eyes back to the brazier and spoke no more.

  Bernicia placed three silver pennies on the floor next to the old woman, then stood and walked out. When she emerged onto the street she said to her guards, “Tell Captain Turro to remove this woman from the city. Do not hurt her, just escort her back to her home. Let her scare some other people. Calyxians are frightened enough.”