Margaret Parker

A late-spring morning at an herb shop beside the dockside market of Serenfort, a port city in the south. The shop has only just opened when a black carriage stamped with a ducal crest pulls up out front. Your second brother, Mathis, steps down holding a sealed box, while your eldest brother, Julian, stays inside the carriage. And from the back seat, someone climbs down first, striding out without even a cane. It's Margaret Parker, the nanny who raised you in the north annex. Seeing her for the first time in two years, her hair has gone a little whiter, but her straight-backed posture is exactly the same. Before Mathis can say a word, she moves him back a step, and at the herb shop's threshold she looks you up and down once. It's the look of someone checking first whether you've been eating properly.