They plucked her ideas from the air before her mouth and passed them as their own. They did nothing for her – except for the talking. Other adults listened to them. So Gillian allowed the ex-servant Jerome Brackson to "head" the rebellion, while she and her friends did the leg work. Nobody listened to teenagers, but they did talk to them.

Lucy talked the most. She talked like someone who hadn't found a receptive ear for years. Gillian nodded as if she understood, and that was all she needed. Today, her words flowed steadily like a river, masked from unwanted listeners by the din of the marketplace. The winter crowds pressed closer than they had in the summer now that the food within the stalls had become a precious commodity. Gillian couldn't have afforded the fruits of the royal city even if she had come to the marketplace to shop. They came from the magician farms, where the weather remained perfect year-round.

"Have you heard? There's a new king!" Lucy hugged herself, pulling her elbows close so that the crowd would flow around her. Her eyes shone with excitement, but her smile remained tight and nervous.

Gillian had heard about the new king. The soldiers that prowled her town's streets had announced the news with a flair of fireworks and bravado, as if the commoners cared which face commanded the troops that destroyed their livelihood. If they were lucky, the new king would only raise the taxes slightly. Their hopes remained at ground level, however. Life had reserved luck for the magical.

"What's he like?" Gillian asked. She struggled to maintain an interested expression. Now that the discussion group had become a rebellion, the interviews had become work. Every new piece of information brought the rebellion closer to action – closer to the cold dark of the unknown. People would die if it didn't work. People would die if it did work. Whatever the outcome, life would never be the same.

"He's..." Lucy shuddered, scanning the crowd for watching eyes. She was optimistic compared to the other castle servants Gillian had come across; if something made her nervous, it was serious. "He can control minds. You can feel it happening, but you can't do anything about it. It's..." She trailed off. "But the Queen's Shadow, his shadow now, he keeps him under control. He made the King release me." She paused and her smile returned. "He's so nice."

Gillian frowned. "He's the one who saved your life, isn't he?"

Lucy nodded. "He respects the servants much more than the other magicians. I think I know why, now." Her smile grew wider. Gillian tried not to show her impatience; with each marketplace visit, the servant girl became more of a storyteller, dragging the conversation along for her own amusement rather than getting to the point.

"Why?" Gillian played her part.

Lucy leaned forward. "His parents were commoners." Gillian sighed. Many magicians' parents were commoners. The soldiers simply removed them from their parents at a young age, just as they had with Sonia's older brother. Those five or fewer years of poverty never changed the way they viewed commoners. But Lucy continued: "He lived near the border until the Queen invaded when he was seventeen." Seventeen. He wasn't like Sonia's brother at all. Gillian nodded, anxiously waiting for Lucy to continue. Lucy squinted in thought. "Let me try to remember this right... I think he said his mother was a bookbinder and his father was a farmer. Or maybe it was the other way around."

A bookbinder. Gillian hadn't met many of those, though they served no purpose in the commoners' towns given that they weren't allowed to own books in the first place. She frowned. "How did you learn this?" It seemed oddly personal, especially given that the King's Guard didn't talk to Lucy. If he had, she would have bragged about it.

Lucy's smile grew even wider. "I overheard the King and the Guard talking about their childhoods in the castle library. They're friends, you know. They spent time together even before the Queen's death, and the Guard protected the King even before he was king. I think they might even be more than friends." The servant girl raised her eyebrows, and Gillian could tell that they had wandered into gossip territory. Conjecture wasn't useful for planning a rebellion.

"Thank you as always," Gillian said, ignoring Lucy's disappointed frown. "I'll meet you here two weeks from now. If the weather is bad, I might not show. Just know that I don't mean to stand you up." She passed a bag of coins into Lucy's waiting hand, courtesy of Brackson's weekly donation rounds. He was useful, even if he passed her ideas as his own.

The servant girl melted into the crowd the moment Gillian finished speaking, eager to return to the warmth that Gillian was sure awaited her within the castle walls. Fire magicians worked wonders on the buildings of the royal city. On the other hand, the farm Gillian worked for had lost a goat to the latest snowfall. His eyes had glazed over with white-blue frost when they found him the next morning. But at least frozen bodies didn't stink like the ones that had died of heat stroke and dehydration the last dry summer.

Gillian walked beside the wagon for most of the return trip, worrying that the icy wind would freeze her blood if she stood still. Nobody but Jan, a new member of their half-baked rebellion, had come with her to the city this time. Jan's horse replaced Dolly's every other week now that the visits to the city had become more frequent. The trip was terribly long for one malnourished horse to make so frequently. Some of Brackson's donations went towards feeding them better oats, at least.

The floorboards in the town hall creaked as she stepped through the door, expanding in the cold and straining against their confines. She winced, trying to hold her head high, but inevitably her gaze found the floor once again. She didn't have Brackson's confidence. Not in front of adults, at least.

"Did you learn anything new?" Brackson perched on the edge of the wooden stage, where Gillian had once sat during the discussion groups. Chess and Mirko weren't at this meeting. They disliked the interfering adults just as much as Gillian did. Only Sonia didn't mind; her eyes remained locked on the prize. She wanted to take down the magicians.

Gillian cleared her throat, making eye contact with Sonia rather than surveying the small crowd. The meetings never included all of their supporters; such an action would draw suspicion. Instead, only Brackson's "council" came, and these individuals passed new information onto the rest of the town. "The new King is capable of mind control, so he could prove to be very dangerous. He is also very close with the Queen's Shadow, now his Shadow, as they were friends prior to his election." A collection of sighs puffed clouds into the frigid air. They had all hoped that the Queen's Guard would react badly to the election, leaving a weak spot in the next leader's armor.

Gillian continued. She didn't care to pause for the sake of drama as Lucy did. "However, the King's Guard has a soul, by the sounds of it. He protects the servants from the King's wrath, just as he did in that isolated incident with the Queen, and his background indicates that this may be a result of his empathy with non-magicians like ourselves."

Brackson paused in his writing, flipping through his notes from previous meetings. "What do you mean? What about his background?"

"According to a conversation a servant overheard, he grew up on the outskirts with commoner parents and only became the Queen's Guard when she invaded his town. He was seventeen, at the time. One parent was a bookbinder, the other was a farmer."

Brackson scratched his scruffy beard. "The Queen probably killed them, then. That gives him a reason to hate the magicians." His conclusion was obvious, but the others nodded along as if his words were gold.

None of them knew what they were doing. Gillian didn't know why she had any hope, or where Sonia found the resilience that burned in her gaze like fire. If the rest of the town knew that they didn't have a plan, that they were still desperately grasping for information, they probably wouldn't donate their hard-earned wages to the cause.

"So the Guard will be the key," Brackson said, shutting his notebook. He didn't elaborate, though the others watched him expectantly. He had no truly original thoughts.

"We should send someone to speak to him," Gillian finally said. She couldn't bear the silence. "They can pose as a servant, since the magicians don't pay attention to the servants. You can explain how to get in and out of the castle." As a former servant, Brackson would have been the ideal choice to send into the castle, but Gillian could tell by the way he avoided visiting the royal city that he had no intention of ever returning to those stone walls.

"Exactly!" Brackson grinned, latching onto the idea with his grimy thumbs. "We'll send someone."

"I'll go," Sonia said.

"Really?" He sounded shocked that anyone would be interested, but quickly recovered. "Of course! How spectacular! You'll be perfect, too. Nobody will question a little girl. Talk to me after the meeting and we'll start planning the questions and the route." More like Gillian would plan everything.

"You stay, too." He pointed to her. Gillian wasn't surprised.

Branford raised his hand, still covered with soot from his job as a blacksmith. He was Chess' father, which was the only reason he had a place on Brackson's council. He had a habit of asking pointless questions. Brackson sighed and waved his hand. "Go ahead."

"Wasn't there a bookbinder in Tern a few months ago? I heard he fixed up entire shelves full of books."

Brackson grunted. Nobody wanted to think about Tern, not when they so desperately wanted to believe that their own rebellion would succeed.