The Quicksilver Court

Book 2: Rooks and Ruin

by Melissa Caruso

Genres: Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Loyalties are tested and nations clash in this fresh epic fantasy bursting with adventure, intrigue, ambition, and deadly magic—perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Karen Miller.

Ryxander, Warden of Gloamingard, has failed. Unsealed by her blood, the Door hidden within the black tower has opened. Now, for the first time since the age of the Graces, demons walk the world.

As tensions grow between nations, all eyes—and daggers—are set on Morgrain, which has fallen under the Demon of Discord’s control. When an artifact with the power to wipe out all life in a domain is stolen, Ryx will do whatever it takes to save her home from destruction. But success may demand a larger sacrifice from Ryx than she could have imagined.

Release date: October 12, 2021

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 544

Sample

Anything coming to kill us yet?”

Ashe tossed the question to me from her perch on a low stone column at the near end of the bridge. The cold light of the luminaries caught sparks in her eyes.

I shook my head, lips pressed together.

“Only because it’s been two hours, and my rear is freezing off.”

I tore my eyes away from the rough black edge of forest beyond the bridge. “Do you want to go up to the castle and get a coat?”

Ashe shrugged. “I hate fighting in a coat.”

“I’m really hoping there won’t be any fighting.”

Ashe gave the restless, hissing trees on the far side of the bridge a dubious glance. “You go on hoping.”

I couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. The wind shook whispers and creaks from the night-hoarding boughs, a language I could almost understand. The tops of the pines swayed, seeming ready to march toward us with slow arboreal menace.

They might do exactly that, if my grandmother got angry enough.

I didn’t feel anger surging through the link that bound us, or much of anything for that matter. My grandmother kept herself remote these days—for which I should be thankful, given circumstances. Instead it worried at my mind like an itch, not knowing what she was up to.

“This isn’t like her,” I muttered. “We always welcomed trade and visitors from the Empire.” I’d built an entire diplomatic strategy on it. Now my grandmother was driving imperial citizens from her domain, and I had to watch all my work crumble with each frightened refugee crossing the border.

Ashe didn’t answer. Either she hadn’t heard me, or she didn’t feel the need to point out the obvious: my grandmother had a reason for not acting like herself.

We stood on the imperial side of the graceful stone bridge the Serene Empire had built across the river, with its carvings of fruitful vines and twin lines of bright luminaries on tall poles. Well-laid paving stones continued the road behind us as it wound off through the hills into the Empire, a branch climbing to Castle Ilseine above us. On the far side, beyond the pooling brilliance of the luminaries, a rocky dirt road passed between two rough and ancient boundary stones into the darkness of the forest and vanished.

Home. I was close enough to feel it, through my magical link to the land of Morgrain: the life running strong through the pine-scented shadows, the birds sleeping in the boughs, the tiny creatures crawling in the earth.

It would be so easy to cross the bridge, to pass between the stones, to enter the forest. Every piece of me yearned to take that first step forward, to plunge back into Morgrain as if I were returning to my grandmother’s welcoming arms. Even if what I was feeling from the land didn’t exactly qualify as welcome. Slitted eyes watched us from the darkness, and behind sharp fangs rumbled a growl too low for human ears to hear—the same song the trees whispered, the words resonating in the earth: You can’t go home.

“Hey,” Ashe said, her voice low and rough. “Don’t do it. She kicked you out, remember?”

“How could you tell I was thinking about it?” I asked ruefully.

“You had this glazed look.” She lifted her head, keen as a dog pricking its ears at distant voices. “Wind makes it hard to hear if they’re coming. You sure you can’t feel anything?”

“Maybe if I were closer.”

Ashe knew as well as I did that we were supposed to stay on this side of the bridge. The last thing the Empire wanted to do right now was rile up the living border to wrath by a perceived display of aggression. She chewed her cheek a moment, thinking.

At last, she let out a puff of breath. “All right. I hate standing in the light anyway. Makes us a target.”

We crossed the bridge, pacing its stones between overlapping pools of light as the river rushed in darkness beneath us. There was no point trying to be stealthy in our approach; my grandmother could sense my presence. As both a demon and a Witch Lord, she could kill us in the blink of an eye if she chose.

Once, I would have said she’d never do that. Now, I couldn’t be sure, and that uncertainty was like a ragged hole that let the bitter wind in through a favorite old coat.

“You realize they could all be dead,” Ashe said conversationally. “We could be waiting here for nothing while the wolves eat them.”

“The last batch of refugees made it through all right,” I pointed out.

Ashe snorted. “Bit scratched and dented, and that was without an ominous warning first.”

The warning was why we were here. My mother’s note—just a scrap of paper, a torn-off corner dropped in my lap by a sparrow this afternoon—had said simply, Expect trouble. So we’d come down to watch at the bridge instead of waiting for the refugees in the warm castle. Ashe because she was adept at trouble herself, and me to try to pacify my grandmother if necessary. The rest of the Rookery were stuck in a meeting consulting with the imperial Falcons on potential anti-demon enchantments; there’d been a lot of those lately, peppered between outings to investigate fruitless tips on the location of the Demon of Hunger and the occasional quick jaunt to deal with an alchemical accident or a forgotten artifice trap leftover from centuries-old border wars.

“I just hope we’re enough,” I muttered.

“If we’re not, then numbers wouldn’t matter anyway.”

She had a point. If my grandmother truly wanted to kill the fleeing imperials, they’d already be dead.

Ashe fell a step or two behind me as I passed beyond the light of the bridge and crossed the brief open expanse of weedy grass to the looming edge of the forest. The boundary stones stood so close I could almost touch them, vibrant with power, marked with my grandmother’s blood to close the circle of her grasp around Morgrain. The forest exhaled its soft breath over me, scented with pine and decaying leaves and the soft musk of living things. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, almost weak with longing.

Something was coming.

A shiver of anticipation ran through the forest at the very edge of my senses. The trees rustled as if the wind surged, but the air lay still. An owl stretched its wings, staring down the road; small creatures woke from sleep and lifted wary heads to blink around them.

“Here they come,” I whispered.

Ashe rolled her neck. “Time to find out if this is going to be a mortal danger sort of evening, or a drinks by the fire sort of evening.”

Far down the road, someone cried out in fear.

“Sounds like mortal danger,” I replied, my pulse quickening.

“No reason it can’t be both.”

Travelers should be safe on the road. The Conclave of Witch Lords had decreed the trade roads neutral territory and prohibited assaulting those who stayed on the path; it was one of Vaskandar’s oldest and most important rules. But those rules got bent or broken sometimes even under normal circumstances—and since she had merged with the Demon of Discord, we had no reason to expect my grandmother would hold much respect for them.

Another shriek sounded from the forest, rising with the sharp edge of terror in the darkness. An encouraging voice shouted “We’re almost there! Hurry!” in response.

A voice I recognized. Sweet Grace of Mercy.

“I’m going in,” I snapped to Ashe, throwing myself into a heart-lurching run without waiting for a response.

“What? Wait, Ryx, don’t—”

“That’s my mother!”

I plunged between the boundary stones, caution forgotten. Morgrain unfolded around me at once, painting my senses with a thousand colors of life.

The packed dirt beneath my pounding feet resonated at my touch, watered with the blood of my ancestors, linked to my very soul. The trees had known me before I was born; the creatures that prowled the darkness were my brothers and sisters by the bonds of magic, bound inextricably to my family line, part of the great web of life that ran through Morgrain like the blood in my grandmother’s veins—and in mine.

For as long as I could remember, I’d lived with the comfort of knowing in my bones that every living thing in Morgrain would protect me. That everything from the smallest insect to the most towering tree was my ally, my friend.

Now something was different, colder, darker, wrong.

No, Ryx. You can’t come home.

I pelted down the road in the moonlight-mottled darkness, breath seizing in my chest, following the sound of running feet and crying voices and chiming steel. Branches leaned down over the road, reaching for me. Twigs caught at my hair, and I had to leap over a root that buckled up from the earth to grab me.

My domain had turned against me. It hurt as if a member of my own family had stabbed me in the back. Curse it, Grandmother.

A handful of figures approached on the road ahead, three of them running and stumbling toward me, at least one clutching an injury. The fourth stood with her back to me, grounded in a graceful fencer’s stance, the thin silver gleam of her blade leveled at a hulking, green-eyed shadow in the road before her.

My mother, facing down one of our battle chimeras by herself.

I threw a breathless “Keep going, the border’s just ahead” at the fleeing people and passed them by without another glance; Ashe would ensure they made it. Heart pounding, I skidded to a halt beside my mother.

A shaft of moonlight fell full on her through the trees, catching the jeweled pins that held up her rippling black hair and the elegant swept coils of her rapier guard. Her vestcoat barely nodded at Vaskandran style, with a fitted Raverran bodice, fine Raverran brocade, and a fullness of fabric sweeping behind her that made the skirt look more like the back half of a gown than the bottom half of a coat. Her stance was pure poise and control, as always, and she regarded the battle chimera crouched before her as if it were some churl who had rudely interrupted a private conversation.

She didn’t seem injured, thank the Graces. The battle chimera growled low in its throat, hackles up, teeth showing in a snarl; it had the bulk of a bear and the face of a wolf, with patches of scaly armor on its sides. A couple dozen of them always patrolled the border, but they normally had strict orders to never so much as come in sight of the road.

“Ryx,” my mother greeted me, without taking her eyes off the chimera. “Good to see you.”

I couldn’t keep my own voice nearly so level and calm. “Mamma, get out of here. I’ll hold it off.”

“We’ll hold it off together.”

“You get the others to safety,” I urged her. Whatever I had to say to get her out of danger. “Grandmother won’t hurt me. Please.”

The chimera threw back its head as if it were in pain. A strange sound came from its throat, twisted and almost unrecognizable, starting as a gurgle and turning into something closer to a bark.

Laughter.

“Won’t I, Ryx?” it hissed.

A chill walked down my spine. The battle chimeras weren’t intelligent; their throats weren’t formed for speech. The Lady of Owls must have seized control of this one from afar and shaped its tongue to suit her needs.

“Grandmother?” I whispered.

The beast leveled the flat green glow of its stare at me, reflecting the distant light seeping through the trees from the bridge.

“I told you not to come home,” it said, in a voice scraped up from deep in its animal chest.

Grief and anger stung my eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll be leaving in a moment.”

“Start backing away,” my mother whispered. She took a smooth and careful step back herself, sword still pointed at the chimera’s eye.

I tried to follow her, but something caught my ankle. I glanced down in alarm to find a root crooked up from the earth and around my boot, winding tighter like a snake with prey in its coils.

My heartbeat lurched faster. She was taking this personally. I was in trouble.

That horrid chuckle rumbled up from the beast’s belly again. “I didn’t warn you to stay away because I wanted you gone, Ryx. I warned you not to return to Morgrain because I knew that if you did, I wouldn’t let you leave.”

The root coiled up my leg; a second one wrapped my other calf. Oh, holy Hells. I managed to wrench that foot out of my boot, leaving it prisoned and empty on the road, but my trapped leg wouldn’t come free.

My mother stepped up by my side again. “You’ve made your point, Most Exalted. Let her go.”

This was no good. I had to get my mother out of here. “Ashe?” I called over my shoulder.

“All clear!” Ashe’s voice floated distantly through the trees. “Got them past the border. You can come back now!”

“I’d love to!” This time, I couldn’t keep the edge of panic from my voice.

The chimera paced closer, until its hot breath warmed my face and its fierce eyes stared directly into mine. “I’ve missed you, Ryx. Time to come home.”

A hard lump formed in my throat, and I stopped struggling to get free. I could almost hear my grandmother’s resonant voice below the chimera’s growling one, almost see the orange rings of her mage mark gleaming in the chimera’s eyes.

“I miss you, too,” I said hoarsely. “But last time I was home, you wanted to half kill me to see if it would get me to release my power. So forgive me if I’m reluctant to return to Gloamingard.”

The chimera’s lips drew back from its knife-sharp teeth in a wicked grin. “Oh, you don’t have to come to Gloamingard for that. I can do it right here.”

The chimera’s grin widened to a snarl, fangs bared, and its shoulders bunched to spring. A white-hot lance of fear ran through me. “Wait, don’t—”

A hiss of steel sliced the air, and the chimera’s head fell with a heavy thunk at my feet.

I couldn’t suppress a yelp. My mother stared in shock, frozen halfway through a lunge; she wasn’t the one who had killed it.

Ashe straightened from her landing crouch, magical energy crackling up her sword from the wire-wrapped orb at the pommel. She might as well have dropped from the sky. Her spiky near-white hair was even more disheveled than usual, and her eyes shone with intense focus.

“We need to run, now,” she said, as the chimera’s body toppled to the ground.

Before I could protest, her sword whipped around in a low, clean arc, slicing through the root that wrapped my leg. Its edge sizzled with magic. I shook the severed wood off, fear rising as the trees thrashed into life and angry animal cries rose up from the forest around us.

“Wise woman,” my mother agreed. The three of us sprinted as fast as we could for the border.

Branches reached for us; wings beat at the air. My atheling’s senses swarmed with all the life converging on us, roused at my grandmother’s command. The air came into my lungs sharp as a knife, and the rough road jabbed at my bootless foot with each uneven step. Ashe paced me easily, slashing at anything that got too close; my mother kept up well enough, her long-skirted coat flowing behind her.

It was only a short dash to the border, and we dove between the boundary stones in a matter of seconds. The lights of the bridge blazed in our eyes.

The open ground felt dead beneath my feet again. The loss of that connection hit me like stepping into cold water.

I collapsed to my knees on the stony road, gasping. Ashe continued toward a cluster of people waiting nervously on the far side of the bridge, huddled together with fear—the refugees my mother had brought to safety, in person this time.

She could have told me she was coming herself.

“Ryx. Are you all right?” My mother hovered over me, not quite touching.

Expect trouble, she’d said. She was trouble, all right. I laughed, breathless. “I’m fine. Mamma, I know you like dramatic entrances, but this is too much.”

She smiled, a strange hesitancy in her eyes, her hands caught empty halfway through some gesture I didn’t recognize. “Are you… That is, can I…”

A hug. She was offering me a hug.

My chest constricted. I held up my wrist; the golden jess encircling it shone in the lamplight.

“It’s safe,” I said, my voice ragged with emotion.

My mother let out a low cry. For the first time since I was two years old, she threw her arms around me.

I knew her scent so well, from years of being wrapped in her scarf in place of her arms. But this—this warmth, this closeness—this was new. Hells, what I wouldn’t have given for this when I was small and afraid and just beginning to learn all the ways I could ruin the world around me, all the lonely consequences of a killing touch.

I hugged her back, fiercely, and buried my face in her shoulder to hide my stinging eyes.

“I’m so glad you came,” I muttered into the fine brocade of her collar. Her enfolding warmth promised I could let go of everything I held clenched in my middle, all the worry and responsibility and fear, and surrender it trustingly to her supporting embrace, like I dimly remembered doing when I was very, very small.

But that was a luxury of innocence, and one I’d lost long ago.

I drew in a deep, perfume-laden breath. “We have work to do.”

I keep thinking I’m going to die.” My mother laughed at herself, letting go of another quick hug and settling beside me on the velvet-cushioned sofa we shared in the sumptuously furnished Rookery sitting room. She seemed entirely at home among its brocade curtains and glittering luminary crystals, in a way I couldn’t be—this place was too formal, too imperial, too unlike Gloamingard’s ancient gloomy halls. “It’s hard to break almost two decades of instincts.”

I could feel those instincts in the tension that pulled her muscles taut beside me. It might have been nice to pretend it was left over from our brush with the chimera, but I knew better. It had always been a simple fact of my life that my mother was afraid of me, and for good reason.

“I’m glad you’re all right. I was worried, after your note.” Expect trouble. It summed up my mental state for the past few weeks rather nicely. The familiar knot in my gut tightened, an anxious snarl of everyone and everything I loved that I’d had to leave behind in Morgrain under a demon’s power.

“Yes, sorry if that was a bit dramatic. I was short on time and paper.” She scooped up her wineglass for a quick sip, as if gathering strength. “And we’ve had… communication problems.”

“What kind of problems?” I asked, wary.

She grimaced. “As it turns out, when your primary method of sending messages is via bird, and all living creatures in the domain bow to the authority of the Witch Lord, there’s no such thing as a secret plan. Every bird we sent trying to organize a coup stopped at Gloamingard on the way.”

My chest tightened. I’d put my frail hopes and no small amount of organizational effort into the family attempt to usurp my grandmother’s power; the implications of its failure were dire.

“Is Da all right?” Surely she would have mentioned it first if he weren’t. “And the others? Did she—is she angry?”

“Oh, everyone’s fine.” My mother sighed, with a note of frustration. “She doesn’t need to hurt us. She froze us in place for an hour to make it clear how disappointed she was. Every single one of us who’d started to put the plan into action, scattered across the domain.” She fluttered her free hand distastefully, as if my grandmother’s magic were clinging cobwebs she could shake off. “I’d hoped she couldn’t control me, but alas, I’ve lived in Morgrain long enough to be part of it. I had the most terrible itch on my nose that I couldn’t scratch. No, we can’t challenge her from within Morgrain, I’m afraid. Much as I hate to say it, we’re going to need outside help.”

My heart sank as if I’d dropped it into a murky pond. “No one is going to help Morgrain.”

Her sculpted brows drew together. “Surely the Empire—”

“They’re moving Falcons and weapons to the border.” I hated the words as they crossed my tongue, bitter and hard in their truth. “They’re trying to hide it from me, but I’ve seen and heard enough. The Serene Empire isn’t preparing to help us. It’s preparing to attack.”

“I see.” My mother took another long sip of her wine. “That’s… unfortunate.”

I didn’t mention what else I’d learned, something that set my stomach to churning with anger: the Serene Empire had dispatched assassins to kill my grandmother with a powerful magical trap. She’d sent what was left of them back to Raverra in a small box via Imperial Post.

“So it’s just me, then,” I muttered, half to myself.

It was a grim realization—not even my family could help me. I had no retainers, no soldiers, no mages, no chimeras at my command. I was one person, my magic sealed and useless, without any exceptional skills or strength that might let me protect an entire domain by myself. Even the Rookery couldn’t help; their job was to find a way to defeat my grandmother.

I’d better come up with a damned good plan.

“You don’t need to take it all on yourself, Ryx,” my mother said softly. She clasped my hand, a deliberate gesture she visibly steeled herself to make. Her hand was warm and unfamiliar; I’d never learned the shape of it.

She frowned suddenly and flipped mine over, tracing a gentle finger across my palm. “Blisters? You have been hard on yourself! Where’d you get these?”

It was difficult not to pull away. “Sparring. Ashe has been teaching me to be a bit better with a rapier, so I’ll have a way to defend myself with my power sealed.”

“Good,” my mother approved. “It always irked me that I couldn’t teach you more myself, but there’s only so much you can do without risking physical contact.”

I curled my hand closed. “Forget about my blisters. Have you seen Grandmother? How… how is she?” Is she herself, or has she become utterly a demon?

“She’s not seeing anyone but Odan. She’s locked up in Gloamingard, and he comes out to meet people at the gates and pass along her words.” My mother let out an exasperated sigh. “Your father went to see her, of course. The man is stubborn as an ox, but she wouldn’t come out.”

“She must be so lonely,” I murmured, despite myself. “With only Odan in the castle, and the whole world turned against her.”

I knew worrying about my grandmother was ridiculous; as a Witch Lord, she’d been nigh invulnerable even before the Demon of Discord fused with her spirit. And yet I still thought of her as the fierce-eyed woman who brought me lavender tea when I had nightmares, who shrugged it off with a laugh when I broke things, who stroked my hair and held me when I sobbed as a child over whatever poor soul I’d nearly killed this time. As a human, who needed human things.

My mother lifted incredulous eyebrows. “The Lady of Owls is stronger than the mountains. She’s fine.”

“How is Odan then, living alone in the castle with a demon? Have you heard anything about anyone else from Gloamingard? Gaven or Jannah or—”

The door banged open. I whirled in my seat as Ardith of Kar sauntered into the room, hands stuffed into the pockets of their vestcoat of butter-soft russet leather, grin plastered across their face.

“Evening, Valeria, Ryx. Heard you were talking politics without me, after I came all the way here from Kar.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You were eavesdropping, you mean. Otherwise how could you know we weren’t having a tender family reunion?”

“Oh, please. Valeria’s Raverran. Family reunions are politics.” They nodded graciously to my mother. “Good to see you, by the way.”

My mother rose and curtsied. “Always a pleasure, Honored Ardith.”

“Same, same.” They turned back to me. “And of course I was eavesdropping. My father would be disappointed with me if I didn’t.”

“Ardith arrived here yesterday to consult with the Rookery about Grandmother on the Fox Lord’s behalf,” I told my mother, “since apparently we’re the global experts on demons right now.”

My mother blinked. “I suppose you are. How odd.”

“About that.” Ardith cocked a ginger eyebrow at her. “I don’t suppose you’ve come with any handy secret news about what the Lady of Owls will do next? The leaders of Eruvia are all peeing themselves wondering.”

“They’ll need to change their breeches and get on with it, I’m afraid,” my mother said. “Though I can tell you she’s much less likely to take steps they won’t like if they stop antagonizing her.”

“Bunch of twits, playing poke the bear in the eye.” Ardith shook their head.

“I’m glad your father has more sense, at least.” My mother inclined her head to Ardith. “The Fox Lord has been entirely civil. Acting as if nothing is wrong is the best strategy right now.”

“No sense picking a fight with an actual demon if you’re not ready for it,” Ardith agreed. “Speaking of which, I have a question for you. My father may have some friends who want to call a Conclave, to figure out what to do about this whole demon situation.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t already,” I said, my gut tightening at the thought. It was bound to be bad news for Morgrain—I had trouble envisioning any scenario where the Witch Lords didn’t unite against the demon in their midst.

“Yes, well, there’s one little issue.” Ardith grimaced. “The Lady of Owls is a Witch Lord. So either they invite her to the Conclave—literally inviting the Demon of Discord to a diplomatic meeting, which is proverbially a bad idea if kind of a neat trick—or they fail to invite her. Which is also, the stories tell us, a spectacularly bad plan.”

They had a point. I thought it over, playing out one scenario after another in my mind; none of them ended well.

“If she’s not invited, she’s going to show up anyway,” I concluded.

“Ah.” Ardith rubbed the back of their head. “That was my question. Well. That’s awkward.”

My mother frowned. “Between this and the chaos in the Serene City, it’ll be rather hard for Eruvia to muster any kind of coordinated response to the demons.”

Uneasy suspicions churned into motion in my mind. “What chaos in Raverra?”

“Apparently when your Rookery reported that the Demon of Hunger had allied with the Zenith Society, it set off something of a… scuffle.” She eyed her mostly empty wineglass as if considering whether to refill it. “To make a complex situation simple, the Council is trying to thoroughly purge Zenith Society members from the government—but as they’d worked their way into a lot of high positions, it’s rather a mess. There’s blood on the floor.”

“If Raverra’s distracted cleaning its own house, maybe that’ll buy Morgrain some time,” I said grimly. And then I heard my own words, and swore.

Ardith and my mother looked at me. “What?”

“Chaos in Raverra.” I waved a hand northward. “Uncertainty blocking the Conclave from coming together. You might even call it discord.”

Ardith whistled. “You think she’s doing this on purpose somehow, to keep the wolves away from Morgrain?”

“I suppose it’s arguably kinder than murdering them all,” my mother murmured.

My fingers flicked out instinctively from my chest in the warding sign. “Avert.”

Ardith turned to me. “Right, that reminds me! Speaking of things that might make your grandmother kill us all, what’s this I accidentally heard through your super thin door—should get that looked at, by the way—about the Empire moving Falcons and such to the Vaskandran border? Seems less than neighborly.”

“Are you asking as a random gossip, or as your father’s emissary?” I countered.

Ardith made a flourishing gesture. “I’ll have you know that over my strenuous protestations, I’ve been promoted to an emissary not only of my father, but of a certain unofficial association of which he’s a member. Or would be, if they existed, which they don’t.”

“The same international one that’s behind the Rookery?” I guessed.

“Maybe. Perhaps. Who can say? I’m terribly mysterious.” Ardith plucked a pastry off a plate Kessa had left out for my mother. “So spill, Ryx. What’s the Empire up to?”

My mother watched me over the rim of her wineglass with interest. She could hardly urge me to reveal potential imperial secrets given her long years of service to the Serene Empire, but her eyes did it for her.

“I don’t know as much as I wish I did.” That was an understatement. The sheer frustration of no longer being at the epicenter of information was enough to turn my shoulders into a mass of knots. “Oddly enough, they don’t want an atheling of Morgrain in meetings about preparations for an attack on the domain. But I can tell you there’s an imperial emissary visiting tonight to talk to Foxglove about a secret weapon of some kind.”

My mother lifted an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like something they’d casually mention to the Warden of Gloamingard.”

“They didn’t,” I admitted. “I overheard an officer setting up the consultation with Foxglove.”

“Hmm.” Ardith swallowed a chunk of pastry and licked their lips. “Has this remarkably informative consultation occurred yet? Do you know where they’re doing it? Does that room also have thin doors?”

“I can’t eavesdrop on Foxglove,” I objected. “Tempting though it might be, I’m still trying to build trust with the Rookery.”

Ardith waved an airy hand. “Yes, yes. And the Rookery works for the Crow Lord—”

“They report to the Crow Lord and Lady Cornaro, which is hardly the same thing.”

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