“Hmm. She wouldn’t have lived long.” His lips drew into a thin line as he surveyed Anji. “Still, sloppy work, Hawk.”

Kit wouldn’t say anything she didn’t need to. And she’d already let her temper flare. She stood still and waited.

The Warden stubbed out his cigar into a crystal ashtray, then reached across his desk for a slip of paper.

“Bring this to Bilingues and Colk,” he said, scribbling with a stubby pen. He scratched out a signature and stamped a tiny sigil onto the page’s corner, then folded it once and held it out to her between two pudgy fingers.

Anji stepped gingerly around Kit, taking in her features for the last time, the twisted face that Anji had first seen unmarred save by age, all those miles past across a campfire. The face of the woman who had damned then saved her. She snatched the note from the Warden’s hand. He stood from the desk, hands behind his back, and paced to the window.

“As to your next assignment,” he said, “round up your fellows and report to Illuminess Starkwald. We’ve heard rumors of an insurrectionist camp in place at the Everrun’s western bend, growing in force.” He mashed a fist into one hand. “We’ll crush them. We will ensure our order.”

The Warden stared out across the city, running a hand through his hair as Anji inclined her head and turned for the door. She said a silent goodbye to Kit, and slipped out of the building like a ghost.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

The Tide’s camp was an orderly row of patched tents, cookfires, and racks of weapons. Men and women in homespun paced around the lanes, hauling water and wheeling bundles of cloth and food. Anji trudged up the main thoroughfare against a press of figures in mismatched armor, officers calling out orders to fall in. The clang of a blacksmith hammer rang out above the concert of yells and commands. She even heard a patch of laughter among the din.

She made her way to a tall, white canvas pavilion at the camp’s far end. The rising sun was a warm pink against the line of trees standing like sentinels at its back. The mask felt lighter today. One pothole tripped her up as she came to the pavilion’s front entrance, but if the guards manning either side noticed, they said nothing.

Anji flexed her left hand around her dagger’s hilt, the remaining fingers dry and stiff in the early morning chill. She looked one of the guards up and down, her father’s coat flapping behind her, the coins in her pocket tingling with their loving song.

“Who’s in charge here?”

Places and Terms

PLACES AND TERMS

Cadroot: leaf with sedative properties; dried, ground, and smoked with rolled paper

Celdia: small denomination of currency

Conclave Wardens Sun: judicial arm of the Senate

Conifor: northern city; Anji’s initial destination