“Gods, please don’t kill any priests,” Andry muttered, glancing toward the Ibalet.

“Wouldn’t be my first,” she answered neatly.

A red light grew in the glass windows. It flickered and flamed, born of a hundred torches as the Queen’s soldiers overtook the palace grounds, surrounding the cathedral.

Andry clambered up the steps to the solid gold altar, where the high priest performed services. Six windows loomed over it, stained-glass portraits of mighty Syrek and his great deeds. After years of worship, Andry knew them all without looking. Each image, of flame, of war, of conquest, of creation, was picked out in red, gold, and green, filled with swords and lions, brilliant in the sunshine, foreboding in the dark. He winced when Dom grabbed a bronze brazier and lobbed it into the closest glass masterpiece.

It shattered with a crone’s shriek, spitting glass into the river below.

“Ride the tide; keep under as long as you can,” the Ibalet barked, waving Corayne up to the broken window. The woman checked Corayne’s sword, tightening the buckles of the belts for her. Again Corayne looked back, finding Andry. This time, he saw fear in her. Only a flash, but enough.

He ducked his chin, giving her the best nod he could muster.

She nodded back, resolute.

Dom was the first to jump through, and Corayne followed with a graceful dive. The Ibalet didn’t hesitate, leaping into the dark air, the splash of her body almost soundless in the river below.

Andry stepped up to the jagged edge of the window. The water was relatively clean; most refuse got caught on the water gates that kept boats away from the palace. They wouldn’t be swimming through slum garbage. It didn’t make jumping any easier. Nor did the thoughts swirling in his mind.

Torchlight filled the windows, and he heard the whipcrack bark of orders outside as the garrison arrived. There was nothing behind him but steel and fire. The Queen was with Taristan, the man who had killed Sir Grandel, Lord Okran, Cortael—his own twin—and all the rest, their bodies left to feed the crows.

They’ll torture me. Question me. Punish me for hiding the sword, for helping Corayne. This was obvious. Andry could already see the dungeons of the keep in his mind. And then they’ll name me a traitor and kill me.

But still he could not jump. It wasn’t the fall that frightened him, all twenty feet of it into the rushing black river. The drop could have been two inches or two miles. Either way, it felt like an ending, a gate falling shut. A failure of everything that came before.

My father, dead for the Lion, dead for duty to a crown I’ve betrayed. He forced a hiss. A crown that betrayed me, and the realm entire. I’ve done nothing wrong.

I’ve done nothing wrong, he thought again as he dropped through the air. For the first time, he took solace in the words of the whispers.

Burn the life behind you.

The days of Squire Andry Trelland were certainly aflame.

It was his mother’s face he saw when he hit the water, suspended for a moment in cold, endless dark. The current pushed him along and he let it, holding his breath beneath the surface. There was no red heat here, as he’d seen in Taristan back in the hall. No malicious shadow moving behind the black. Only the river, only cool hands pushing him along.

And those damned whispers, which sounded like ice, like winter, solidifying into one voice.

Stand tall and steadfast true.

The darkness comes; your choices grow few.

Andry was a son of Ascal, born and raised in the capital. He knew the canals well, and his skin crawled as they swam. He kept his mouth shut and tried not to think of everything the water carried, from the upriver slums of Doghead to the slaughter yards in the Cowbank. In the dark, he could pretend the river was clean. And in the dark, they were difficult to see, difficult to follow.

The whispers faded, leaving Andry alone in his head. His own voice now pounded in his head. Get out of the palace. Get to the docks. With each breath he thought, Get to the docks.

He kept close to the others, until the Ibalet woman angled toward shore. They hauled themselves out, one by one, dripping wet on the meager bank, a dirty triangle of mud and sand half covered by an overhang of the street above.

Andry clambered quickly to his feet, as did Corayne. She patted the belts of the Spindleblade, checking the sword as she shook the hair from her eyes. It was still there, safe in its sheath.

“Get up or get hidden,” the woman hissed, glaring at Dom still sprawled on the ground. Her gaze burned like two candles. “I doubt even three of us could drag a log like you out of here.”

Dom groaned, too weak to respond, but rolled his knees, one hand braced against the wound. It seemed to be bleeding less, despite all the exertion of swimming.

Andry shot to his side, slipping a hand under the Elder’s arm.

“Push through your feet, my lord,” the squire whispered, the immortal heavy in his grasp. He was almost as heavy as a knight in armor. “Lean on me.”

“Me too,” Corayne chirped, taking his other arm. She nearly buckled under his weight.

“Thank you,” Dom murmured, sounding surprised, his pale cheeks flushing pink. By their aid or his own weakness, Andry couldn’t say. Probably both. “Good that my cousin isn’t here; she’d never let me hear the end of it.”

“I’ll be sure to mention it if I ever meet her,” Corayne said, grinning through the strain.

Meanwhile, the Ibalet woman pulled off the rest of her torn dress, revealing a wet shift and leggings beneath. Her silhouette was smaller but not slight, every muscle well formed and taut, like a piece of rope wound up on itself. More tattoos showed at her collar and wrists, where her bronze skin was exposed to the air. Andry glimpsed a bird’s wing and some Ibalet writing in curling script, a constellation, and a dagger like a half moon, before his stomach twisted and he had to avert his eyes.

“Apologies, my lady,” he gritted out, looking at the wet ground.

The Ibalet scoffed out a laugh. “Never seen a woman’s body before, Squire?” She sounded amused. “I think it’s a bit late to be thinking of your honor.”

His face went hot, cheeks flaming. “If I must betray the kingdom to save her, I will do so,” he mumbled. There is no going back, even if I wanted to. No way but forward.

Upriver, lights blazed, the streets swimming with torches as search parties set out from the New Palace. Andry pictured the cathedral, the knights of the garrison standing at the broken windows, staring into the black abyss of the canal. The predators to our prey.