Domi didn't mean to eavesdrop on the skychariot attendants. He was just trying to make his way back to his Ma and Radix without getting caught sneaking out to spend time among Pyrrhaei when he overheard two voices in the private dining chamber.

"Will you put that stupid stone down and help me?" a woman asked. Glass clinked and steam whistled.

Domi paused, pressing himself behind the lip of the rounded wall. He didn't know how to behave around regular people anymore. To his extreme discomfort, they now ogled at him like he had two heads and yet managed to do it without lifting their own heads or meeting his eyes. And that was without knowing that he was royalty.

"I will in a second," a man said, his voice low and absent. "There's an update."

"No, not in a second. Now, please." Liquid burbled. "We have a job to do."

The man's answering voice was scornful. "What, provide a midnight coffee break to a bunch of lazy Lightholders who have been partying all night? Please."

Domi glared at the faux marble wall on the other side of the corridor. Bellus and the rest of the protocol handler's team were working furiously to deal with the mess Domi had caused and these people called his staff lazy?

"I doubt they're partying," the woman said, and he relaxed a little, leaning closer. "I have no idea what they're doing, but have you seen their expressions? Whatever they're focused on, it's serious. They've been up all night working on it."

"Not working hard enough. Sipping coffee while the whole world burns?"

Domi felt the blood draining from his face. Was the whole world afire because of him? His back ached where the Blightlands were and he could feel other, smaller pangs and a weird churning unease in his belly, but it didn't feel like the world had been set alight. But he did not understand the Trellis yet, and what if--

"The whole world is not burning." The woman's words had him breathing a sigh of relief, though he tucked his lip between his teeth as she continued. "Just some fires here and there. And that was earlier."

"Just some fires and flooding, then frost, and now this hurricane," the man mocked. "I heard in the Caeles that it's expected to become a hypercane."

"A what?"

Abrupt silence fell and Domi realized then that he'd spoken out loud.

Well, crap. Feeling like the world's biggest dunce, he stepped from behind the curved wall, rubbing the back of his neck.

The man, a short, stout youth, tossed a weird palm-sized black rock on the dining chamber's central counter and inclined his head in fear more than respect. "Promerenti!"

The woman was more composed, offering a smooth bow with a quick glare at her fellow attendant out of the corner of her eye. As she rose, she asked politely, "May I get you anything, Promerenti?"

Domi studied her aquiline face. Something about her beak-like nose perhaps, was familiar. Yet she looked back at him with no hint of recognition, so he just shook his head. "No, I'm not allowed to eat."

"What? Not allowed?" the man asked, grimacing at his companion as the woman pointed an emphatic finger at a steaming pot from which the most amazing aroma wafted. Grumbling under his breath, he grabbed a large mesh metal ladle and, placing it atop another pot, began to pour.

Domi eyed the dark liquid. "Actually, can I have some coffee?" He was pretty sure he wouldn't be breaking his fast by just drinking something and for once his Ma and aedificans were not around to stop him from trying the divinely-scented beverage.

"Aren't you a bit young?" the man asked with a raised brow, setting aside the ladle full of dark grounds. "You're, like, twelve."

"I'm fifteen," Domi snapped, crossing his arms and glaring. He was small for his age, he knew that, but he didn't look like a bloody twelve-year-old!

The woman sighed. "Just give the Promerenti some coffee."

Domi had never known until he became a Lightholder that sorcerers had more keen hearing than others. As the man leaned into the woman and whispered, "We're not even supposed to be talking to him without a guardian present", he pretended not to hear.

"Well are you going to refuse to serve a Trueborn?" the woman hissed back under her breath as Domi occupied himself with slipping into a chair. The woman placed a mug in front of him a moment later and nodded for the man to fill it. "Here, Promerenti," she said. "Freshly brewed."

He nodded, watching eagerly as the cup filled. Taking it in both hands, he inhaled the nutty, faintly sweet scent in blissful appreciation. It smelled like liquid chocolate.

It tasted like boiled socks.

He barely managed not to spit it out. Swallowing the bitter, acidic brew only by sheer force of will, he offered the two adults a weak smile. "Um... Is it supposed to taste like this?"

The woman's lip twitched. "Never had coffee before?"

Domi offered a wry smile. "Could never afford it even if my Ma had let me try it."

"Could never aff--"

"Well, Promerenti," the woman interrupted her companion with a stern glare before beaming at Domi with fake cheer, "try it with a bit of milk and honey. Maybe a dash of cocoa or cinnamon."

He was tempted to leave. They were uncomfortable with him there and their discomfort was swiftly becoming his discomfort. People like this used to spit on him and other Pullati when he lived in the slums, and he had to remind himself that they could not hurt him anymore.

Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to relax. "How about cinnamon? I've never had that before."

"Never had cinnamon?" the man asked, voice incredulous. Domi shrugged and the man went on, "You Lightholders are sheltered, then?"

"Habrus--" the woman snapped with a mortified glance Domi's way. Her hands shook as she passed him a tray of milk, honey, cinnamon sticks, and powdered chocolate.

Domi shook his head. "No, it's alright, he's just curious." He met the man's gaze and nodded. "Yes, we're sheltered in some ways. Most of the people I know need to get out more and learn about the world outside the collegiums." Even Arbita was an idiot about some things. "They're way too ignorant about the way everyone else lives."

"You talk like you don't think you're like them," the man scoffed.

Domi found he was kind of enjoying the attendant's refusal to use an honorific to address him. He plopped a cinnamon stick into the coffee and stirred in a bit of milk and honey. "I wasn't born a Lightholder." He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean, I was, but I was raised among Pyrrhaei."

"Huh. I heard that happens sometimes. They call them..." The man blushed as he trailed off. "Well, never mind."

"Feral?" The boy smiled as the man blanched. "Don't worry, I've been called way worse." Including by middle-class Pyrrhaei like this. Far worse. He changed the subject away from uncomfortable memories to more important things and sipped the coffee, hiding a grimace. Why did people drink this stuff? "So, you mentioned something earlier." He swallowed, dreading to hear what they might say but needing to know. "A hypercane?"

"Yes, Promerenti," the woman said. "There are reports all over the Caeles. The forgeholders and worldholders think the hurricane that just wiped out Saxum Exalbidum ten minutes ago might develop into a--"

"Domi, what the hell do you think you're drinking?" All three of them jumped at Merula's intruding, commanding voice. "Put that down and come with me right now."

Domi grimaced, his face heating. The coffee was awful, but he was not some little kid who couldn't be trusted to drink it without bouncing off the walls or whatever she feared might happen. But there was no use arguing with her when she spoke in that tone. "Sorry, Ma." He slipped off the chair, smiling at the attendants. "Thanks for the coffee, Eri."

As Merula escorted him away, behind him he heard the female attendant murmur, "That was weird."

"Did he call her Ma?" the man whispered.

"Well, he did say that he was raised as a Pyrrhaeus."

Merula looked down at him, her face full of exasperated disapproval. And something else, something he could not place. "What are you thinking, boy? You can't talk to random people," she hissed, her eyes darting behind her back toward the dining chamber.

Fear. That's what it was. Fear, something that he was not used to seeing on her face. Not the Rex Pullati.

Domi frowned. "They have no idea who I am, Ma." He glanced at an observation window as they passed, taking in the brilliant midnight Trellis, so beautiful and so wrong. "But they know stuff about what's happening outside."

"Like what?"

"Well--" He nibbled his lip, his heart sinking into his belly in dread. "--have you ever heard of something called a hypercane?"