Rain had followed Tess Anru all the way from the ruined hamlet on the Flowstead road to the southern gates of Fairmeadow. It was the slow, soaking sort that pushed through cloak and leather and settled in the joints, a gray weight falling out of a sky that no longer bothered with thunder. Her horse’s flanks steamed in the chill, and every step on the rutted road squelched, the Lantern Coast’s salt tang folded into mud and wet grain.

  By the time the walls of Fairmeadow rose out of the dusk, the rain had flattened her black braids against her skull and turned the city’s banners to dark, dripping tongues. Lanterns burned along the gatehouse, their light smeared on the puddles beneath. Tess kept her chin down as she rode beneath the carved stone crest of the Four Thrones—griffin, kraken, dragon, and the single unblinking eye of Cyclops—pretending that the hammer in her chest was only from the long ride and not from the memory of Dragon horns at her back.

  She left the horse with a sleepy stable-lad just inside the gate, paying a little extra to keep the gelding under a roof and out of official eyesight. House Dragon would be tightening their lists after the clash at Flowstead. No sense giving them a mount to connect to her name. On foot, she slipped into Fairmeadow proper, the capital’s streets narrowing around her.

  Fairmeadow at night felt different from the noisy, sun-struck city she remembered. Rain blurred the lamps, and the stone underfoot shone like river rock. To her right, the bulk of the Castle district rose in layered terraces, dark roofs and tall facades where Dragon scribes and Griffin scholars argued by day over ledgers and laws. To the left, down toward the bay, the smells thickened: tar, wet rope, smoke from low taverns, and grain dust from Kraken warehouses. Above all of it, the single tower-spire of the Castle of the Four Thrones pricked the clouds, its windows faintly lit, like an eye that refused to close.

  She kept to the main street that climbed toward the Castle district, cloak drawn close around her short coat of leather and wool, sword-hilt tucked from notice. Twice she passed Cyclops patrols in brass-eyed cloaks, their boots loud on the slick cobbles. Once, a pair of Dragon officers in slate coats and red-corded sashes crossed an alley ahead of her with a scribe between them, the woman guarding a leather case as if it contained something sharper than paper. Tess waited in a doorway until they had gone by, then slipped on.

  The entrance to the holding cells below the Castle sat behind its own smaller gate, a squat arch of old, weathered stone. The air here smelled different—less of salt, more of lime and wet stone and the close animal tang of men kept in small spaces. A single lantern burned over the door, throwing a cone of light onto an iron-bound plank and the man slouched on a stool beside it.

  He looked up as Tess pushed the door open and stepped inside, rain dripping from her cloak to the flagstones. His armor was government issue, scuffed at the edges and carelessly buckled; his face had the slack, half-set look of a man resigned to a quiet shift.

  “What in all four houses is this, then?” he asked, straightening a little. “You know the hour?”

  Tess forced her lungs to slow. The run from the main gate up the hill, the climb through streets slick with rain, the need not to look like she was fleeing the memory of Dragon steel south of the city—all of it boiled together in her chest. She took two breaths before speaking, keeping her voice even.

  “The hour’s wet,” she said. “And a horse slides on stone in this. I came the last streets on foot. That’s why I’m panting, not from any wish to trouble you.”

  That brought a ghost of amusement to his mouth. He leaned back again, testing the weight of this interruption. “You’ve troubled me anyway. What do you want, cloak?”

  “I need to speak with Thalvor Hadrun.”

  He laughed, a short, incredulous bark. “You and half the city. You think I open his door because a soaked stranger asks nicely? Come back in the morning with a paper from House Dragon or Cyclops and stand in line with the rest.”

  Tess stepped closer until the lantern caught her face, made the planes of it clear. She did not look important; that worked in her favor as often as it worked against her. In her right palm, she let the coins fall one by one, soft clinks of silver on callused skin. The sound carried just enough in the empty entry hall.

  The guard’s gaze dropped. He hesitated for form’s sake, then for his own conscience, then because the night was long and this was more interesting than staring at a dripping door.

  “That’s improper,” he muttered without conviction.

  “It’s late,” Tess replied. “No clerks to record, no scribes to frown. I need ten minutes with Hadrun. I ask nothing else of you. Keep your seat, keep your name off it.”

  The coins shifted as she rolled them, a bright, tempting spill. The guard’s hand twitched, then closed around the money in a quick, embarrassed snatch. He slid the coins into a pouch under his belt, as if he feared they might leap back to her if they remained in sight.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “No touching the bars. No shouting. No promises on his part that I have to answer for, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  He stood, went to a small shelf by the wall, and took up a candle. With a small knife he snapped it cleanly in half, letting the upper piece drop back into the box. He lit the stump from the lantern’s flame, then placed the short candle in her hand. The wax already leaned.

  “When this goes out,” he said, “so does your visit. Corridor’s straight, Hadrun’s at the far end on the left. Don’t dawdle.”

  The prison corridor smelled of old lime, sweat, and metal. The candlelight painted the mortar in wavering gold, catching in the iron bars that lined both sides. Behind some, men lay on cots or pallets, turned toward the wall; behind others, eyes watched her pass with idle curiosity or dull resentment. The stone underfoot was worn in the middle, a shallow trough from decades of boots and bare feet.

  The last door on the left bore no name, but she knew it before she reached it. Thalvor Hadrun sat on the edge of the narrow cot, shoulders hunched, hands clasped loosely between his knees. Without his Cyclops parade coat and mask, he looked smaller in the gray prison tunic, but the compact strength remained: the breadth of chest and shoulder, the thickened knuckles of fists that had met sand and training blades since boyhood. His right eye was rimmed red with lack of sleep. The customary disk that had once covered his left eye was gone now; an ugly scar traced beneath the lid, half-hidden by shadow.

  He looked up at the shuffle of her boots. Recognition took a heartbeat to reach his gaze. When it did, it sharpened, cataloguing, judging, remembering their earlier meeting below the Castle of the Four Thrones.

  “You,” he said. His voice was rough, as if unused all day. “I hoped Dal had sent someone less… freelance.”

  “Captain Dal didn’t send me,” Tess said. She stopped where the floor’s rust line marked the limit of visitors. “Your sister did.”

  He snorted. “Riona’s solution to everything is another blade and another contract.” He nodded at the candle in her hand. “What’s that?”

  “Your ten minutes,” Tess said. “Bought from your guard.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Dragon will eat him alive if they find out.”

  “Then they’ll need to catch him looking,” she said. “We don’t have time for the moral map of this corridor, Hadrun. I rode from Flowstead for you.”

  The name cut through his anger. He sat a little straighter. “The bands. Fenrik.” Contempt twisted his mouth. “Did you find his corpse in a ditch, or is he still breathing borrowed air?”

  “He’s still alive,” Tess said. “And he swears he didn’t kill your father.”

  Thalvor’s hands closed into fists between his knees. “He lies. That’s what men like him do.”

  Tess let his certainty sit between them for a moment, a heavy stone on bad ground. The candle burned low, wax already curling over the edge of her knuckles.

  “I went to the ambush site you marked on my map,” she said quietly. “To the bend in the river north of Flowstead. The camp was too neat, Thalvor. No broken tack, no spilled grain, no charred wood from a fire cooked down to coals. Just a shallow ring of ash that looked scattered for a later eye, not for warmth. Whoever put that place in order did it knowing Dragon or Cyclops would come look. It felt… arranged.”

  “A careful raider is still a raider,” he said. “Fenrik knows men will track blood and boot marks. He wiped his mess and left you puzzles instead.”

  “These weren’t a river band’s puzzles,” Tess replied. “Fenrik’s not that tidy. I’ve seen his settlement now. He leaves rope ends and broken handles like any other outlaw camp. This was different.”

  “Different,” he repeated, voice flat. “You stake my father’s death on the amount of rope dropped on the ground?”

  “I stake my judgment on patterns,” Tess said. “And on what I saw in Fenrik’s eyes when I put your father’s name on the table. He’s loud, careless with words. But he wasn’t covering the sort of guilt that comes from cutting down men in their bed-rolls. He was impatient, almost insulted that anyone thought he’d taken coin to do nothing and then broken his bargain anyway.”

  “Bargain?” Thalvor’s head snapped up. “You’re telling me there was a bargain?”

  “Marel Vey paid the Flowstead bands,” Tess said. The words tasted like old smoke. “We knew that from your suspicion. Fenrik confirmed it and showed me the letter. The coin was for ‘escort’—but everything about the phrasing and the way he talks about it points to one meaning: leave the convoy alone. Keep your knives sheathed, take the money, and disappear into the trees while honest men in Kraken colors march past.”

  For a heartbeat Thalvor said nothing. The candle hissed as a drop of wax slid down onto her skin. She ignored it.

  “Any coin in a bandit’s hand is a knife,” he said at last, each word carved. “You think because Vey wrote ‘escort’ he meant mercy? He wanted my father dead. He said as much on the terrace before half Fairmeadow.” His voice roughened. “You weren’t there. You didn’t hear him.”

  “I read Riona’s account of that night,” Tess said. “And listened to your own, when we first spoke under the castle. You’re right that Vey was too smooth and too pleased with his own wit. But everything Fenrik said matches that letter. If he broke the deal and struck the convoy, he’d brag about it. Men like him don’t hide their best stories.”

  “He hides his worst,” Thalvor retorted.

  “If this were his worst, the settlement would be heavier with stolen grain and widows,” Tess said. “Instead, Dragon is dragging his people in chains because of a letter that says he took coin to stand aside, not to cut in. That’s what Dal’s holding over him.”

  Thalvor’s right eye closed briefly. When he opened it, it burned. “Then someone else killed my father under that writ. Which is worse, Anru? The bands we pay to watch our flanks, or the men we march beside under our own colors?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Tess let her voice soften by a fraction. “Fenrik said something before Dal’s riders descended on his settlement. He told me to find the survivors of the convoy. Didn’t you say there were survivors when we spoke before?”

  He shifted on the cot. Even in the dim light she could see the strain in his face, the exhaustion pulling at his mouth, the way anger held him upright. “Men came back,” he said reluctantly. “Enough to bring a story. They said it was night. Torches around the wagons, watch posted, all proper. Then shouts. Shapes in the dark. Blades. Arrows. They swear the men who came out of the trees wore river-band colors.”

  “Who?” Tess pressed. “Give me names, not just shadows.”

  His jaw clenched the way it did when he was arguing a case. “Baelan Ravik,” he said. “House Kraken. He commanded the convoy. Owns a warehouse in the trade quarter here in Fairmeadow. He led the line, set the pace, handled the tallies from Sunspire Harbor to Flowstead. His word carries weight. He’s traded with my father for ten years.”

  “Others?” Tess asked.

  “Three of his house guards,” Thalvor said. “Kraken men. They took wounds, came back with scars they showed to every clerk who would listen. There were no Cyclops soldiers alive to bring their own account. The teamsters and drovers died with the wagons.” His hand twitched as if he could feel a hilt that wasn’t there. “Baelan said they barely fought Fenrik’s bands off. Said the brigands melted back toward the river, laughing.”

  “Did Dal question them?” Tess asked. “The survivors?”

  “He questioned Baelan, yes. Took his testimony down neat, tied with a red cord, same as every other tragedy that passes through his office.” Thalvor’s contempt for Dragon procedure was familiar by now. “Baelan repeated the story—night, bands, out of the trees. You can read it if Dal lets you. He won’t.”

  Tess thought of the hamlet at Flowstead, the neat camp, the absence of real struggle. “And you never wondered why only Kraken men came back?” she asked.

  “I wondered,” he snapped. “I also knew Vey had his claws in Kraken business. Payment through their ledgers, letters with their seals. I had a simple picture: Vey buys river knives. River knives kill convoy. Baelan comes home with a painted tale. Sometimes the simplest pattern is true.”

  “Sometimes it is,” Tess agreed. “Sometimes it’s the one you’re being encouraged to see.”

  He glared at her. Then, slowly, some of the heat tipped toward himself instead. “You think Baelan lied to Dal.”

  “I think Baelan told Dal a story he expected to be believed,” Tess said. “And I think I need to hear his tongue slip without forewarning. If he knows more than he’s said, I want it from him before Dragon realizes there’s another line to follow.”

  “And you intend to walk into his warehouse and ask nicely?” Thalvor’s bitter amusement was a poor fit on his tired face.

  “Not as Tess Anru,” she said. “And not as anyone connected to House Hadrun.”

  The candle flame trembled; the wick had burned down to a stub floating on its own molten wax.

  “I don’t like this,” Thalvor said. “All this talk of bargains and ‘safe passage’ and bandits who stayed their hands. It makes my father’s death… smaller. As if he was an accident at the edge of someone else’s arrangement.”

  “It makes it stranger,” Tess corrected. “Not smaller. If someone used that convoy as a cover to remove him, they did it knowing there’d be witnesses. That speaks of confidence, not chance.”

  He drew in a long breath. “Baelan Ravik,” he repeated. “Trade quarter, eastern end, near the old mill road. Grain on his walls and Kraken ledgers in his blood. He was in my father’s study more than once. They drank together, argued over margins together. My father trusted his word.”

  The flame shrank one last time and went out, leaving only a smoking thread.

  “Time,” came the guard’s voice down the corridor.

  Tess closed her fingers around the cooling wax. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I didn’t help you,” Thalvor replied, getting to his feet. “If you find proof that bands didn’t kill him, bring me the name of the man who did. I don’t care whose sigil he wears.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “Don’t try,” he said. “Do it.”

  The door’s bolts grated as the guard turned the keys. Tess stepped back from the rust-line and let the dark swallow Thalvor’s silhouette as the lantern light narrowed to a strip, then a sliver, then nothing. The guard locked the last bar, glanced at her empty hand, and nodded toward the exit without comment.

  Outside, the rain had thinned to mist. Fairmeadow’s Castle district lay quieter now, its columned courts and slate-roofed offices looming in the gray. Tess paused under the shallow shelter of the prison arch and looked down over the city.

  The Lantern Coast’s bay stretched black and wide beyond the lower districts, dotted with anchor lights where ships from Beacon Hook and Copperbell Isle rode out the weather. To the east, somewhere beyond the roofs, the Griffin towers of the college gleamed, their windows dim but not entirely dark—magic and scholarship didn’t keep ordinary hours. To the west, the Cyclops-aligned barracks and practice yards crouched like patient beasts, their parade squares puddled and empty.

  Her lodging lay in that direction. The Lonely Eye was not much to look at from the street—a solid, two-story inn with shuttered windows, a swinging sign carved with a single stylized eye and washed in Cyclops blue and brass. It sat on the edge of the military district, close enough to the barracks to serve officers and patrol captains, far enough that the innkeeper could pretend to neutrality when Houses fought over rooms.

  Tess took the familiar back lanes to reach it, slipping past a closed smithy where the last of the forge heat bled into the rain, then along a narrow street lined with armories and tack shops. A Cyclops patrol passed ahead of her, their brass-eye emblems glinting, boots mirroring the steady rhythm she’d heard all her life in cities like this. One of them glanced her way, saw only a tall woman in a dark cloak with a sword sheathed under leather, and turned back to his conversation.

  Inside the Lonely Eye, the warm air hit her like a hand. The common room smelled of stewed meat, old smoke, and the faint tang of oil from armor stands near the hearth. A few late drinkers hunched over tankards at scattered tables—off-duty soldiers, mostly, and one Kraken factor talking too loudly about tariffs to a man who only wanted to finish his ale in peace. The innkeeper, a broad-shouldered woman with gray in her hair and the Cyclops brass discreetly pinned at her throat, was wiping down the bar.

  “You’re late,” she said as Tess slipped in. “And wet. You’ll ruin my floor.”

  “I’ll leave the mud on the mat,” Tess said, managing a tired half-smile. “Anyone asking after me?”

  The innkeeper’s eyes flicked over her, sharp and quick. “Not with names. Dragon officers were in earlier, general questions about traffic from the south, but they didn’t bring a description. Yet.”

  Tess’s shoulders loosened a fraction. “If they do, I was never here.”

  “You’re one of Riona Tareth’s strays,” the innkeeper said. “I know how that game’s played. Your room’s where you left it. Door sticks in the damp; give it a proper shove.”

  Tess nodded her thanks and traded the warmth of the common room for the narrower hush of the side corridor. Her small chamber lay under the eaves, with a single shuttered window and a bed just wide enough to let her stretch. She closed the door behind her and leaned on it for a moment, feeling the ache in her legs and the buzzing fatigue in her skull.

  The room was dark, but not empty.

  “Took you long enough,” a voice said quietly.

  Tess’s hand went to her sword before she fully registered the speaker. The blade came half out of its sheath before her mind caught up and put the name to the tone.

  “Riona?” She let the sword slide back, control reasserting itself over reflex.

  A figure disentangled itself from the shadow beside the bed. Riona Tareth wore a dark riding cloak over Cyclops blue, her posture composed even in the cramped space. In the faint light from the shutter, Tess glimpsed the glint of a brass eye at her collar, the neat lines of a woman who had grown up at the heart of Fairmeadow’s power and had learned to use it with precision.

  “My guards saw you come through the south gate,” Riona said. Her voice was level, but there was strain under it. “Sodden, hood up, riding like Dragon horns were at your heels. They thought I might like to know.”

  “I suppose they were right,” Tess said. She pushed the wet braids back from her forehead and sank onto the edge of the bed, one hand braced on the mattress to keep the room from tilting. “I’ve been busy since we parted.”

  “So I gathered.” Riona’s eyes searched her face, checking for wounds, for tremors, for anything that might change the angle of questions. “Tell me.”

  “Flowstead first,” Tess said. “Fenrik’s people took my knife, my map, and the writ you gave me for Dal’s cells. Then they sat me in a hut and waited to see what sort of fool I was. Fenrik himself confirmed what you suspected: Marel Vey paid his river bands—paid them to stay away from your father’s convoy. Not to hit it.”

  Riona’s jaw tightened at the sound of Marel’s name. “He said that plainly?”

  “He said it in his way,” Tess replied. “But he had the letter. Wording was careful. ‘Escort,’ ‘safe passage,’ all the right phrases. But to bandits, ‘do nothing’ is work if it’s paid. He swore they took the coin, left the road, and let the convoy pass untouched.” She paused. “If they were lying, they were very good at it.”

  “I don’t care how good his mouth is,” Riona said. “My father is still dead.”

  “I know,” Tess said softly. “But if Fenrik didn’t strike, then the ambush wasn’t a simple raid. The camp site looked like theater. Ash laid out to be examined. No clutter from a hard march. And now we have a line from Fenrik’s lips: ‘Find the survivors.’”

  “Survivors,” Riona repeated. “There were some. Thalvor told you?”

  “He did, tonight,” Tess said. “That’s why I went to the cells before coming here. He was certain, when we spoke under the castle, that Marel Vey had bought river knives to kill Raegor. Now he has to face the idea that someone might have used that arrangement as cover.”

  Riona moved a fraction, as if struck somewhere she’d armored less well. “And he took that with grace, of course.”

  “He took it with rage,” Tess said. “And with a name. Baelan Ravik. Kraken merchant, grain factor, convoy leader. Runs a warehouse in the trade quarter. Thalvor said he and three Kraken guards walked away from the attack, while everyone in Cyclops colors died. Dal’s official story rests on their testimony.”

  Riona exhaled slowly. “Baelan.” She went to the small window and pushed the shutter open a finger’s width, letting in a faint wash of city noise: a cart on wet stone, a distant shout, the soft clink of a watchman’s bell. “He’s been in our ledger books longer than I have. He handled convoys before my marriage, kept them moving when Dragon’s procedures snarled the roads and Griffin’s inspectors counted more than they carried. Raegor trusted him.”

  “Trust sometimes makes the best mask,” Tess said.

  Riona glanced back. “You think he betrayed the convoy.”

  “I think it’s curious,” Tess replied carefully, “that every man in Kraken livery lived while your father and his Cyclops escort died. I think it’s more curious that the camp looks staged and that Fenrik laughs at the idea of taking coin to watch grain and then breaking the deal anyway. I don’t know yet if Baelan wielded the knife, but he knows more than he told Dal. I’d stake coin on it.”

  “Then we’ll bring him in,” Riona said, straightening, the familiar command settling over her. “A summons, formal questioning in the castle, Dragon presence to satisfy Dal, Cyclops presence to remind him whose dead man lies at the center.”

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  Tess shook her head. “If you do that now, he’ll have a day to polish his lies and line up his alibis. He’ll imagine the questions. He’ll imagine who’s behind them. And he’ll know someone has been talking to Thalvor in his cell.”

  “You imagine he doesn’t already suspect?” Riona asked.

  “Maybe he does,” Tess said. “But right now, he thinks he’s weathered the worst of the storm. Marel Vey is dead; the terrace scandal is chewing on Dragon and Kraken. Thalvor is caged. In Baelan’s mind, the story has already been told. He won’t expect a stranger to walk in tomorrow morning asking about shipments to Beacon Hook.”

  Riona studied her. “A stranger.”

  “I still have a few names left that don’t mean anything in Fairmeadow,” Tess said. “Some of them even have coin behind them. Let me go to Baelan as a prospective client. I’ll talk grain and tariffs. I’ll complain about rumors of raids. Then I’ll listen.”

  “And if he smells you for what you are?” Riona asked quietly. “A sword with a mind behind it. A woman who sat in my brother’s cell twice and walked into Fenrik’s camp alone.”

  “Then we learn something from that too,” Tess said. “But I’d rather hear his first answer before he knows which House I serve.”

  Silence stretched in the narrow room. The candle on the shelf near the bed had guttered down to a stub long before either of them arrived; the only light now came from the thin crack in the shutters, making Riona’s face a pale oval in the dark.

  “There is another thing,” Tess added. “After Flowstead, I can’t walk openly. Dal saw me there. He knows my face now. He knows I was in Fenrik’s hall when his riders arrived, and he’ll have my description on a scribe’s page before dawn, if it’s not there already. He still digs for the truth of Marel Vey’s fall, and anyone who walked his balcony’s shadow is a nuisance to him. If I knock on Baelan’s door as myself, House Dragon will hear the echo.”

  Riona’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Dal is thorough,” she said. “The balcony has made him stalk around the castle as if every loose stone might turn into another corpse. He is under pressure—from Kraken, from Griffin, even from my own House. Marel’s death and Thalvor’s outburst gave everyone a grievance. Dragon is supposed to turn grievance into procedure. If he thinks you’re slipping between his cases—Flowstead, the ambush, the fall—he’ll take it very personally.”

  “I noticed,” Tess said dryly. “He tried to haul Fenrik out of that settlement in chains. The man laughed in his face. Then Dragon decided to bring the settlement down around his ears instead.”

  Riona glanced at her. “And you?”

  “I decided not to be standing between them.” Tess flexed her fingers, remembering the sharp smell of smoke, the hiss of arrows in the trees, Fenrik’s crooked grin as he shouted at her to go. “I didn’t go south to die in someone else’s pissing match. I’m back here to finish what I was hired for.”

  “Which is?” Riona asked, though they both knew.

  “To find out who killed Raegor Hadrun,” Tess said. “And, if possible, make sure the right people are holding the right knives when the Houses start swinging.”

  Riona’s composure cracked for a heartbeat at her father’s name. She turned back toward the window so Tess wouldn’t see it, but her voice when she spoke again was rougher. “Very well. No formal summons for Baelan. Not yet. You go to him as you choose, under whatever name you like. I won’t put guards on your shoulder or banners at your back.”

  “Good,” Tess said. Some of the tension drained out of her shoulders. “I work better without an audience.”

  “One thing more,” Riona said, hand on the latch. “If Dal is looking for you, he will not stop because your work suits my House. Cyclops and Dragon might share walls, but we do not share mercy. If he finds you in Baelan’s office, I gave no orders for you to be there.”

  “Understood,” Tess said. “If he takes me, you’ve lost a mercenary, not a cousin.”

  “I lost my father,” Riona said sharply, then caught herself and shook her head. “That was unfair. I know what you risked going south. Just… be cautious, Tess. If Dal catches you in the middle of this web, he’ll pin you to it and call it tidy work.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Tess said. “Or at least lucky.”

  “I prefer careful,” Riona replied. “Luck belongs to Kraken.”

  She slipped out, closing the door with a soft click that sounded too final for Tess’s liking. Alone again, Tess shrugged off her wet cloak and hung it on the wall peg. Her short coat came next, the layers of leather and wool heavy with rain. She sat on the bed a second time, this time without armor between her and the thin mattress, and let herself fall back.

  The ceiling beams blurred above her. For a few heartbeats she stared at them, tracing old nail holes in the wood, listening to the faint creaks as the inn settled into the deeper hours of night. Her mind ran over the paths ahead—Baelan’s warehouse, Thalvor’s stubborn certainty, Fenrik’s laughter under Dragon horns, Dal’s measured voice on the terrace—and then, finally, the paths frayed into white noise.

  Sleep took her like a shroud thrown over a light.

  When she woke, gray daylight pressed at the shutters. The rain had slackened to a fine mist, but the air held that washed-out smell of a city that had spent all night wringing itself dry. Tess pushed upright, muscles protesting, and rolled her shoulders until the stiffness in her neck eased. There had been no dreams—nothing she could remember, at least. That was a blessing.

  Downstairs, the common room hummed with quieter morning noise: the clatter of bowls, the murmur of soldiers discussing patrol routes, a Griffin clerk complaining about ink that wouldn’t dry in this weather. Tess took bread and a bowl of thin stew at a corner table and listened with half an ear.

  “…Dragon notices pinned up at the outer gates,” a Kraken carter was complaining to a companion. “No one’s to leave Fairmeadow without giving Captain Dal a clear route, he says. As if we don’t have enough forms already.”

  “Better than being hauled back by the scruff to explain your face,” the other man replied. “Keep your mouth shut and your ledgers clean, that’s what I say.”

  Tess finished her food quickly and left coins on the table. The trade quarter lay downhill from the government district, a tangle of streets where the smell of the bay wrestled with hay dust, tar, and the sour-sweet scent of grain. As she walked, Fairmeadow came fully awake around her: carts creaking under sacks; teamsters cursing reluctant mules; street vendors arranging baskets of early fruit; Dragon officials in slate coats and neat boots picking their way between puddles to the legal offices; Kraken factors hurrying toward their countinghouses with wrapped ledgers under their arms.

  Baelan Ravik’s warehouse was easy to find once she reached the quarter’s eastern end. It sat near the old mill road, a big, square building of timber and stone whose upper walls were marked with painted sigils of sheaves and waves. A steady stream of carts came and went through the wide double doors, each one queueing briefly as a clerk checked tallies against a board. Men in work aprons and Kraken blue sleeves moved in practiced lines, forming and breaking chains to move sacks from wagon to storeroom to wagon again.

  Tess lingered at the corner of the yard for a few minutes, watching the rhythm. Baelan himself was not hard to spot. He stood near the main doors, a solid figure in a weather-stained coat, voice raised just enough to cut through the noise as he directed loads and corrected a teamster’s backing angle with a few sharp gestures. He had the authority of someone used to owning the grain under his command, not just moving it.

  Satisfied that she could find him again, Tess slipped into a different role. She straightened her shoulders, smoothed her cloak so that the sword hilt lay less obviously under the fabric, and let her expression shift from watchful tension to harried calculation. She put the weight of coin into her stance—not ostentatious, but used to expecting answers.

  She approached a worker by the cart line, a young man sweating under the weight of a sack. “Excuse me,” she said, adopting a slightly different cadence. “I’m looking for Master Baelan Ravik. I was told he handles contracts for shipments south.”

  The man shifted the sack higher on his shoulder and jerked his chin toward the doors. “He’s inside, shouting at us. Go shout back at him; maybe it’ll distract him from me.”

  Tess gave him a sympathetic half-smile and crossed the yard. Up close, the warehouse noise wrapped around her: the rustle of grain shifting in sacks, the creak of wood, the shouted counts, the scratch of chalk on slate. Baelan was in the middle of it, turning from one worker to another, his hands creating patterns in the air that his men translated into action without question.

  She waited until he turned in her direction, then stepped into the line of his stride. “Master Ravik?”

  His gaze snapped to her. Up close, she saw a broad, weathered face, dark hair going silver at the temples, a jaw set in a permanent brace against problems. His eyes flicked over her cloak, her boots, the obvious bulge of a sword at her hip, then to her hands—clean, callused, but not a laborer’s. He recalculated.

  “You have me,” he said, voice dropping a notch as he turned away from the workers. “What business?”

  She offered her invented name as smoothly as if she’d been born under it. “My name is Serra. I act for a merchant house in Keelguard. They’re looking to secure regular grain shipments from Fairmeadow to Keelguard, with some capacity to divert upriver if prices favor it. Your name was recommended.”

  “Ah.” He smiled, a professionally cordial expression that didn’t touch his eyes. “Keelguard coin travels well. You’re early, though. Most outland factors wait until the festivals to stick their noses this far north.”

  “My employers like to secure routes before the feasts make things complicated,” Tess said. “They’ve heard rumors, you see. Raids on the southern roads. A convoy hit not long ago, just off the Flowstead way. That sort of story makes nervous men cautious.”

  Baelan’s mouth tightened for a heartbeat, then smoothed. “Rumors breed best in taverns,” he said. “Grain moves safer than song suggests. I’ve been running wagons between Fairmeadow and Beacon Hook since before Keelguard had decent docks. My name stands on every contract. If you have coin and patience for detailed terms, we can work together.”

  “I prefer detailed terms,” Tess said. “And written guarantees. I’m not inclined to have my employers’ wagons end up the center of tomorrow’s gossip in the Castle courtyard.”

  At the mention of the castle, his gaze sharpened briefly, but he did not rise to the bait. “Of course. My factor handles the ink and numbers. I see to the wagons and men. Kervan!” he called, raising his voice.

  A lanky, thin man with ink-stained fingers and a ledger under his arm detached himself from a desk near the wall and hurried over, almost tripping on a coil of rope. “Master Ravik?”

  “Serra of Keelguard, this is Kervan, my factor,” Baelan said. “He’ll take you through volumes and schedules. Don’t let him charge you extra for his sighing.” There was an attempt at humor in the words, but his mind had already turned back to the flow of sacks and carts. “Kervan, see what we can do for shipments south. I’ll sign what needs signing before evening.”

  “Of course, of course,” Kervan said. He bobbed his head at Tess. “This way, mistress. Quieter inside. We can hear ourselves count.”

  He led her through a side door into a smaller office that smelled of dust, ink, and dry grain. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with ledgers, rolled contracts, and small wooden tokens marked with sigils and numbers. A single window looked out over the yard, its panes streaked with last night’s rain. Kervan swept papers off a chair for her, then settled himself behind a narrow table, opening his ledger with a practiced flip.

  “Now,” he said, dipping his quill in ink. “Shipments to Keelguard, was it? And perhaps Beacon Hook beyond?”

  “Keelguard first,” Tess said, taking the chair with an air of faint impatience. “Beacon Hook when I see you can get wagons through the southern routes without losing half the cargo to trouble.”

  Kervan chuckled. “Ah, the trouble. Always trouble. Bandits, toll-greedy bridgewardens, weather that forgets it’s supposed to behave. We’ve had… an incident or two, yes.” His quill scratched. “Your employers look for monthly convoys? Larger loads every season? Our capacity is good, you understand. Kraken coin swells the coffers when granaries are full.”

  “Monthly to begin,” Tess said. “But only if you can convince me my grain will arrive where it’s meant to. Tell me about your escorts.”

  “Escorts. Yes.” The factor’s tone became more earnest. “After… recent events, we’ve improved our arrangements. More guards per wagon. Better rotations at night. No more skimping.”

  “‘No more’?” Tess repeated. “So you were skimping before?”

  Kervan’s eyes widened, and he waved his ink-stained hand as if to dispel the implication. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. There were always guards. Master Baelan himself rode with the last big convoy—Kraken and Cyclops both on the road. No one expected… well, what happened.”

  “What did happen?” Tess asked, leaning back as if merely curious rather than hunting. “I’ve heard tavern talk, but that’s all wine and grief.”

  “The convoy south of the Flowstead road?” Kervan sighed, grateful for the chance to talk while also wary of the topic. “Nasty business. Night raid. River brigands, they say—Flowstead scum. Came out of the trees when honest men were sleeping. Took half the wagons and left too many bodies behind.”

  He shook his head. “We lost good men. Cyclops officers, teamsters, drovers. Master Raegor Hadrun himself, may his name be spoken loud in the halls. A hard blow. But Master Baelan and his men fought the raiders off. Saved what they could.”

  “So your convoys were light on guards,” Tess said calmly. “Else the raiders wouldn’t have gotten that far.”

  Kervan realized a heartbeat too late how his words had sounded. He stammered. “No, no, not light, just… just not as many as we use now. That’s all I meant. There were guards. Four of them, in fact. Master Baelan and three Kraken house-guards. All experienced. It’s a wonder they survived at all.”

  “Only four?” Tess let a hint of skepticism into her voice. “For a convoy of that size? My employers would call that overconfidence.”

  “They would now,” Kervan muttered, then caught himself and forced a smile. “But as I said, we’ve corrected that. Twice as many guards on every wagon now. House Kraken is not shy about spending to protect its reputation.”

  “Twice as many as four is not much.” Tess let her brow furrow slightly. “And were there no other survivors from that attack? No Cyclops men who made it back to Fairmeadow?”

  “The attackers killed the rest,” Kervan said, a little too quickly. “The brigands knew what they were doing. They went for the officers first. Master Baelan and his men were the only ones able to hold the line.”

  “The only ones.” Tess let the words roll on her tongue. “Yet Fairmeadow’s walls have been thick with tales of that convoy. Someone must have done the telling. Was it only Master Baelan? No injured sergeants, no wounded drovers with stories to trade for extra ale?”

  Kervan’s fingers tightened on his quill. A bead of ink formed at the tip and fell onto the ledger, blooming like a dark flower on the page. “There might have been a teamster or two who made it partway home,” he said reluctantly. “I wasn’t at the burial, mistress. I only write what I’m given.”

  “And what you were given was a Kraken merchant’s version of events,” Tess said. “No Cyclops tongue to balance it.”

  He looked at her sharply. “You have a keen ear for House lines for a Keelguard factor.”

  “Grain moves because Houses feud,” Tess replied smoothly. “I listen to feuds. They make routes change and prices rise. I’d be a poor agent if I didn’t.”

  He subsided a little, reassured by the plausible greed in her explanation, but tension still sat in his shoulders. “Look, mistress. Our convoys now are better guarded than ever. Master Baelan has made sure of it. That raid… woke people. No one wants to see another Hadrun funeral procession. If your employers sign with us, they’ll have the safest wagons on the road.”

  “With Baelan himself leading them?” Tess asked, as if only curious.

  Kervan hesitated. “…Usually, yes. He takes pride in being at the front when it matters.”

  “And he gives you the tales when he comes home,” Tess said, more to herself than to him.

  The factor frowned. “What other tales should there be?”

  “There was a Cyclops man among the dead,” Tess said casually, thinking of Raegor without naming him. “Old soldier, stubborn, liked to argue tariffs with Kraken factors just to see them sweat. I heard he was alive long enough to be carried back to Fairmeadow. Men like that usually have opinions to share before the end.”

  Kervan licked his lips. “I’m sure all proper statements were taken. Captain Dal himself saw to it, they say. House Dragon wanted everything neat and recorded. You’d have to ask them if you want further details. I just move grain, mistress. I don’t decide who lives and dies on the road.”

  He shifted his weight, clearly eager to flee the line of questioning. “Perhaps you’d like to see a sample of our stock. Let the grain speak for itself, yes? I’ll fetch a sack. We have a good lot from Brightfield this week—dry, clean, no mold. You’ll like it.”

  “That would be wise,” Tess said, forcing herself to relax her shoulders as if the entire talk had been idle. “My employers care more about what ends up in their bins than what’s whispered in taverns.”

  Kervan seized the excuse with visible relief. “Excellent. A moment only.” He stood, nearly knocking over his stool in his haste, and hurried back into the main warehouse, leaving the ledger open on the table.

  Tess watched the door close behind him. The office suddenly felt smaller, the air thicker with ink and dust. She stood, moved to the window, and peered down into the yard.

  Baelan was there, back turned, deep in argument with a carter about axle weight. He gestured to a scale, pointed at the load, shook his head until the other man relented. Around them, the operation continued without pause. Men who had survived a night raid, Tess thought, often moved differently after. They hesitated at shadows, glanced at the tree line even in a city. Baelan moved as if the worst thing that had ever happened to him was a delayed shipment.

  Kervan’s words replayed in her head. Baelan and three Kraken guards. Only them. No Cyclops survivors, no wagonmen come home with broken ribs and a thirst for justice. The only witnesses to the attack were the men whose employer would suffer if the truth proved inconvenient.

  She stepped away from the window and toward the door. There was no sense in lingering. With Baelan this close, Kervan’s tongue would tighten again. She had what she needed from him.

  The side door opened onto a narrower alley between warehouses. Tess slipped through it, closing it behind her as gently as she could, and found herself in a damp lane that smelled of old grain and wet stone. She walked quickly without looking back, turning at the first corner and then another, making a quiet exit from Baelan Ravik’s world.

  In the relative hush of a smaller street, she stopped and pulled her cloak tighter, thinking.

  Fenrik’s letter. The stage-dressed camp. Baelan and three Kraken guards, alive. No Cyclops to contradict them. River bands sworn—on pride, if not on gods—that they had taken coin to do nothing. River bands who, by temperament, would have boasted if they’d taken coin to do something bloody instead. Thalvor’s father dead in the middle of a convoy supposedly granted safe passage.

  Someone had needed Raegor Hadrun removed, and had needed it to look like the work of river scum.

  “Not a raid,” Tess murmured. “A culling.”

  The decision that followed came as easily as drawing breath. She turned her steps back uphill, toward the Castle district. Thalvor needed to hear this, and she needed to pry from him every detail he had about Baelan Ravik’s history with House Hadrun while there was still time.

  The climb felt longer in daylight. The Castle district was awake now, its courtyards filling with petitioners, clerks hurrying between offices, and small knots of soldiers on errands. Dragon banners hung damp but orderly from the administrative facades; Cyclops escorts stood at attention before the military sub-offices; Griffin scribes carried bundles of parchment like armfuls of brittle leaves; Kraken factors strode through it all, their coats marked with hem-stitched hull measures and cuff-embroidered sigils.

  As Tess approached the entrance to the holding cells, a sound rose above the usual murmur—a rough swell of voices, grief and anger tangled. She slowed, heart tightening.

  A crowd had gathered outside the gate. Not the organized line of family visitors she’d seen in other towns, but a thick, restless knot of people. Some wore Cyclops colors. Others were plain citizens, curious or upset or both. A few Kraken and Griffin cloaks gleamed among them, their wearers standing slightly back, watching with House-weighted interest.

  “What’s happened?” a woman demanded near the back, pulling at the sleeve of a man ahead of her.

  “They’re bringing someone out,” he said. “Said a prisoner died under watch. I heard a clerk mutter Hadrun’s name.”

  “Hadrun?” someone else hissed. “The prosecutor? In there with chains and Dragon questions, and now this?”

  Tess’s stomach turned to ice. She pushed forward, weaving between bodies, muttering apologies when shoulders blocked her. Years of moving through crowded markets and caravan yards served her well; she slid along the edges of arguments, ducked under an outstretched arm, stepped neatly around a child clutching his mother’s skirts.

  Near the front, the mood shifted from mutter to a held-breath quiet. Dragon guards stood in a thin line before the prison gate, faces set into the impassive masks of men on duty in dangerous weather. Beyond them, two men emerged carrying a stretcher—a plank more than anything, with a rough shroud drawn around the shape upon it. The cloth was plain, but for the dark stain spreading from somewhere near the middle.

  The crowd leaned in as far as the guards’ outstretched arms allowed. There was no wind, but the air moved strangely, as if the weight of attention pushed it.

  “Thalvor!” a voice broke from the right, raw with disbelief and pain.

  Riona Tareth pushed through the line of guards as if they weren’t there. One of them reached out as if to stop her, then thought better of it and let his hand fall. She wore no cloak now, only a dark Cyclops dress, hair unbound in a way Tess had never seen in public. She flung herself at the stretcher, fingers clawing at the shroud.

  “Let me see him!” she cried. “Let me see my brother!”

  One of the men carrying the plank tried to murmur something about procedure, about the need to take the body to a secure room, but Riona’s grief tore through their words. She pulled the cloth back enough to see the face beneath, and the sound that came out of her then was not a word at all, but something older and more terrible, the sound of a woman whose family had been cut in half twice in one year.

  “Thalvor,” she whispered, falling to her knees. Her hands cradled his head as if he might yet feel the touch. “Oh, you stupid, angry man. Not you too.”

  From where Tess stood, she could see only the angle of Thalvor’s jaw, the slackness in his mouth, the bruised shadows at his throat. No obvious wound, no dramatic gash. Whatever had killed him had done so in close quarters and quiet.

  Murmurs rippled outward through the crowd. “Dead… in the cells…” “Could be self-done…” “Dragon’s work, I tell you…” “No, no, he was too proud to hang himself…”

  Tess’s mind raced ahead of her body. Thalvor, dead, in Dragon custody. The one man in Fairmeadow who wanted the truth of Raegor’s death badly enough to claw through House lines. The one man who had just given her the last piece she needed to suspect Baelan Ravik outright. Gone between one candle’s burn and the next day’s business.

  Someone had just closed a door.

  She took a step back, then another. The stir around the stretcher, the raw center of Riona’s grief, the tight faces of Dragon officers near the gate—none of them belonged to her now. If anyone connected her presence here last night with this moment, Dal would not need to hunt her. She would have walked into his hands.

  She turned, meaning to slip back into the crowd and away down a side street, to think, to breathe, to decide whether she could still act or whether every move from now on would be made behind iron.

  She didn’t make it.

  The impact came from her left, a hard shoulder into her ribs that knocked the air out of her and sent her sprawling. Her cheek hit wet stone. Before she could roll, heavy weight bore down on her arms and back. Someone’s knee pinned the back of her thighs; fingers like iron bands locked around her wrists and wrenched them behind her.

  “Got one trying to sneak away,” a voice grunted above her ear.

  “Hold her,” another said. “Careful with that sword.”

  White sparks burst behind Tess’s eyes as someone ground her wrist against the cobbles. She fought the instinct to thrash; these were trained men, practiced in turning resistance into bruises. She angled her body just enough to keep her shoulder from twisting out of its socket.

  “I was leaving,” she managed between clenched teeth. “Not charging the corpse.”

  “So innocent people always say,” the first soldier muttered.

  The pressure on her wrists shifted, adjusting. A moment later, cold iron bit around them: shackles, not rope. Efficient. Dragon-made.

  “Lift her,” a new voice ordered, precise and cool.

  The soldiers obeyed, hauling Tess up in a practiced movement. Her boots slid for a moment on the wet stone before she found her balance. Two men held her elbows. Her hands remained locked behind her back, the iron cuffs biting into skin already scraped from the fall.

  Captain Siran Dal stood in front of her.

  He looked much as he had the day she first saw him under the Castle’s terrace: black hair cut close, slate-colored coat immaculate despite the damp, red cord at his shoulder marking his rank. His face was controlled, every line measured. Only his eyes gave away the weight he carried—sharp, tired, always counting.

  “It didn’t take long,” he said. “We part at Flowstead and meet again at the city cells. Fairmeadow is smaller than the maps suggest.”

  Tess dragged in a breath. “Captain.”

  “Mercenary,” he replied. “Or shall I say—Tess Anru, contracted blade, recently seen standing in Fenrik’s hall when I offered him the courtesy of surrender?”

  She kept her gaze steady. “I work where I’m paid to work. That day at Flowstead, it wasn’t for you.”

  “No,” Dal said. “For House Cyclops. For Riona Tareth.” His eyes flicked past her shoulder to where Riona knelt over her brother’s body, then back again. “And yet here you are again, at the edge of a death that concerns both of us.”

  “I came to speak with Thalvor,” Tess said. “As I did yesterday. You can ask your guard.”

  “I will,” Dal said. “Along with other questions. Marel Vey dies at the Castle of the Four Thrones—falls, jumps, is pushed, we have not yet pinned the word to the board. Thalvor Hadrun, who accused him of murder on the terrace and put a knife through Master Fel’s side, ends up in my custody. You arrange interviews, you visit him, you ride off to speak with the bandit leader whose name appears in the same letters as Vey’s contract with Raegor Hadrun, and when I ride in to arrest Fenrik, you are already at his table. Today, before I’ve finished reading the morning’s reports, Thalvor Hadrun is found dead in his cell, and I find you slipping away from the scene.”

  His voice didn’t rise; he stated each link in the chain as if he were reading from one of his own petitions, line by line. The crowd’s murmur filled the space between his sentences.

  “If this is happenstance, Tess Anru,” he said, “it is very busy happenstance. I have questions.” He nodded toward the gate. “Take her in.”

  Riona’s head snapped up at that. She saw Tess between the shoulders of the soldiers, saw the irons at her wrists. Grief warred with fury in her expression.

  “Dal!” she shouted, voice raw. “What are you doing? She’s my agent.”

  “And a potential witness,” Dal said without looking at her. “Or accessory. Or tool. The categories are not yet clear.” Only then did he turn his head. “Lady Tareth, with respect for your loss, I advise you not to stake House Cyclops’ honor on the innocence of anyone standing this close to your brother’s body. Not in public.”

  “She was helping Thalvor,” Riona spat. “And me.”

  “And now my work requires that I hear her version of that help,” Dal replied. “Under conditions where she cannot simply walk away when the questions become inconvenient. You will have your chance to argue her virtues later, if they still matter.”

  He turned back to Tess. “As for you. You’ve managed to avoid my men since the night Vey fell, haven't you?”

  “I have said nothing to your guards, and I have nothing to say now.” Tess said. “I wasn't anywhere near the Heights. I didn't even set foot in the Castle district that night. I never saw Marel Vey with my own eyes.”

  “That’s exactly the problem—you’ve been a ghost. No statements, no records. Only your shadow at every crime scene. And you have not told me about your little visit to Fenrik, under a Hadrun writ, while I was gathering my men to ride. Or about your time at the ambush site. Or what Thalvor said to you in that cell last night that is now… no longer verifiable.”

  “Thalvor believed your bandit theory,” Tess said, the words out before she could stop them. “Even when I told him the Flowstead bands were paid to stand aside. If you want someone who can confirm he hated Fenrik and Marel Vey with his whole breath, you don’t need me. Ask anyone who stood on the terrace.”

  Dal’s mouth twitched, humorless. “Oh, I have asked them. You’d be surprised how blurred memory becomes once Houses start whispering in ears. Servants remember what their masters would prefer they remember. Factors remember what their ledgers can afford. I am in sudden, desperate need of witnesses who trade in details rather than loyalty.”

  “You think that’s me?” Tess asked. “A mercenary with a bag full of other people’s coin?”

  “I think you are used to seeing different kinds of truth than the ones written in my office,” Dal said. “And I think you have already moved through these matters in ways that do not show up on any of my maps. That makes you valuable and dangerous in equal measure.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And I think that if you had nothing to hide, you would not have been backing away when my men were bringing Thalvor Hadrun’s body out into the daylight.”

  Tess swallowed the impulse to tell him that any sane person backed away from a City Captain and a fresh corpse. “You were busy with Riona,” she said instead. “I’m no use to anyone if I get my skull cracked in a panic.”

  “You’re of no use to me if I let you vanish back into Fairmeadow’s streets,” Dal replied. “Which is why we’re done discussing this in front of an audience.”

  He gestured, and the soldiers tightened their grips on Tess’s arms, beginning to move her toward the gate. The crowd parted reluctantly under the combined pressure of Dragon authority and morbid curiosity. Snatches of talk broke around her.

  “—Dragon’s dog, that one—”

  “—that’s the mercenary Thalvor’s sister hired—”

  “—she was at Flowstead, I heard—”

  “—if Dragon’s grabbing Cyclops agents now, the Four Thrones really are cracking—”

  Tess kept her head up as they walked, though every instinct wanted her to hunch, to make herself smaller, less noticeable. She met Riona’s eyes once as they passed. The Cyclops lady’s gaze was a tangle of things—rage, grief, calculation. For a heartbeat Tess thought Riona might say something to stop this. Then she saw the tiny shake of Riona’s head, the one that said not here, not now, not in front of all these people.

  It was a promise of later, or nothing at all.

  At the threshold, Dal fell into step beside them.

  “Let’s begin again,” he said, voice low enough that only she and the soldiers flanking her could hear. “Tell me where you were the night Marel Vey died. Start with where you were hiding while the rest of the city was at the Four Thrones.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Tess said. “You can scour every terrace and balcony. You’ll find wine stains and broken instruments and a hundred careless witnesses, but not me.”

  “We’ll see,” Dal replied. “Inside.”

  The iron gate of the prison swung open, its hinges complaining. The shadows beyond seemed thicker than they had the night before. Tess stepped through because the men at her elbows gave her no other choice, and because, truth be told, there was nowhere else to go.

  Behind her, in the courtyard, Riona Tareth knelt over her brother’s shrouded body, her grief filling the space where Thalvor’s anger had lived. In the trade quarter, Baelan Ravik’s men moved grain as if the world had not shifted under their feet. Out on the Flowstead road, Fenrik’s bands hid or bled or both, with Dragon riders combing the trees.

  And somewhere between those three points—the river, the warehouse, the cells—the truth about Raegor Hadrun’s last night waited, coiled and patient.

  Tess Anru went to meet Captain Siran Dal’s questions in chains, her own answers locked behind her teeth, the web tightening around her with every step she took.

  Episode 24 continues in Episode 32.