Kira Pelmont pinned the butterfly to her writing desk before she read the letter again. The insect had come that morning inside a folded page, its emerald wings still twitching, a single gold spot on each side like a coin pressed into leaf. In her duchy, the sending of a live starwing meant one thing: a claim on the seat. Someone at her court was telling the other houses that her blood was thinned, that a cousin held the older line, that Eucalypt would be better served by a quieter hand. She had heard the whisper three times in a week. She still did not know the mouth it came from. She smoothed the letter flat. It named no sender. It named no rival. It only asked, in a clerk's careful hand, whether the duchess intended to answer the question of her legitimacy before the winter council or after. Kira called for her steward and gave two orders. Arrest the messenger who brought the butterfly. Hold every letter leaving the keep until she had read it. The steward went pale and obeyed. An hour later he returned. The messenger was a stable boy who could not read. The butterfly had been left on a windowsill by a hand no one saw. And word of the arrest had already reached the great hall, where three lesser lords were now asking, loudly, why the duchess was seizing servants and stopping the post over a bug in a box. Kira stood at the window and watched a groom lead her horses across the yard. She had moved before she had a name, and the court had seen her move. She unpinned the butterfly and dropped it into the fire. The gold spots blackened first. She would need a different hunt now, one that did not look like a hunt at all, and she would need it before the winter council sat.

By morning Kira had a name for her rival, or half of one. The whisper in the hall pointed to a cousin's house whose lord had ridden south the week before the butterfly came. She could not send guards after him. The three lesser lords were already counting her mistakes on their fingers, and a duchess who chased a peer with armed men would prove every doubt they had. She needed a hand that did not look like her hand. She sat at her desk and made a list of everyone in the keep who owed her a private debt. The list was short. She crossed out the steward, who had gone pale once and would go pale again. She crossed out her captain, who could not enter a room without his sword announcing him. At the bottom she wrote the name of a woman who had come to her two winters ago asking for her brother's sentence to be lightened. Kira had lightened it. The woman now kept the linens and moved through every room in the keep without being seen. Kira called her up under the excuse of a torn hem. She shut the door and spoke plainly. She wanted to know who in the household had handled paper for the cousin's house in the last month, who had left the keep on errands without a written pass, and who had been seen near the west window on the morning the butterfly arrived. She wanted it in a week. She wanted it spoken, not written. In return she would sign a release for the woman's brother before the winter council sat. The linen keeper listened, asked one question about how much silence was expected of her, and agreed. She left through the servants' stair with the torn hem folded over her arm. Kira sat a long while after the door closed. She had a hunter now, and no one in the hall would see the hunt. But she had also put her name on a promise she would have to keep in writing, and a written promise from a duchess under question was a paper her enemies would pay well to hold. She opened the drawer where she had swept the ashes of the emerald-winged insect and closed it again. The trade was made. She would learn to live with the cost.

The next morning Kira woke to the problem she had left on her desk. She had a hunter in the halls, but no safe way for the linen keeper to bring word back. A spoken report meant a private meeting, and private meetings between a duchess and a servant would be noticed within the week. A written report was worse. Any scrap of paper the linen keeper carried could be lifted from an apron pocket by a bribed maid or a curious steward. The three lesser lords were watching every door she opened. She needed a channel that looked like nothing at all. She walked to the mews before the household stirred. Her father had kept a working woodpecker there, a black bird with a red cap, trained to tap at a shuttered window when it was loosed from a certain perch. The falconer had died two winters ago and no one had touched the bird since. Kira lifted the hood herself. The woodpecker eyed her and did not flinch. She carried it back to her rooms in a covered basket and set the perch inside her dressing closet, where only her body servant went, and only when called. Then she sent for the linen keeper on the excuse of a stained cuff. She showed her the bird. One tap at the closet shutter meant the linen keeper had a name to give. Two taps meant danger. No paper would cross between them. The linen keeper watched the red crown bob against the perch and nodded once. She left with the cuff over her arm. Kira latched the closet and stood a moment with her hand on the wood. The channel was open. No ink, no seal, no courier to bribe. She had solved the thing she had sat down to solve. At dusk her body servant brought a folded square of linen from the wash. Inside lay a dead butterfly, emerald wings dulled, the gold spot on each hindwing gone dark. It was the twin of the one Kira had burned in her grate. There was no letter with it, and none was needed. Someone in her own household knew she had destroyed the first and had chosen to send a second through her own laundry. The linen keeper had not yet tapped the shutter. Whoever had placed the butterfly in the wash had moved faster than her hunter. Kira closed the linen over the small green body and sat down. She had built her private channel in time. She had built it a day too late.