Her eyebrows lift faintly — an expression meant for Ioane to catch, though it's difficult to say which of the two are its subject.

"No curses here, Serahs," She makes the sign against evil over her chest. "We walk in the Maker's word."

The phrase drones with the frequency of routine (of a young woman's boredom with it), but the look she turns upon Malcolm betrays a new attention.

"Not no longer," The forests show some depredation, but nothing on the scale of a glassworks. "Been since the Duke came in. Twenty years, I figure."

"Got kittens," She offers, as though that's at all the same. "Fine ladies love kittens."

This is a wild-ass guess.