The whole time we’d been talking, Allysaian had been standing beside Garranon with her arms wrapped around herself, muttering something sotto voice. When Garranon put his free arm around her and walked her past us, headed for somewhere private, I heard what she was saying.

“The children, the children . . . oh gods, so many children dead.”

Bile rose to choke me.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I don’t feel well.” I turned abruptly and exited behind Garranon.

15
WARDWICK

My father taught me that vengeance is meaningless. All that matters is surviving your enemies.

UNNOTICED,IFOLLOWEDGARRANON THROUGHthe maze of halls that led to the guest rooms. Unlike me, he had no problem negotiating his way to the room he’d been given, three doors down from my own.

I walked on to my room and closed the door behind me. Chills crept down my spine and stayed there. Not because of Buril’s fate, though that was certainly part of it. Not because of fear, though what I was planning scared me spitless.

I’d been thinking while the others had been arguing downstairs in the hall.

Jakoven’s first two attacks had been aimed at Garranon. The king had been seeking revenge, I thought, because Garranon had left him at long last. They’d also been experiments, to see what the Bane could do, successful experiments. Jakoven wouldn’t have wasted his last drop of Tychis’s blood on experiments, so I had to assume he had enough to power the Bane for at least one more attack—a real attack this time. Only if a weapon tested well, my aunt said, should it be used in battle.

My father had respected Jakoven’s grasp of strategy. And good strategy would send Jakoven to attack Hurog next. Jakoven, like my uncle, would have seen the power of Hurog over Shavig. If he took Hurog right now, before the first battle, Shavig would lose the united front against Jakoven. All the dragon-blooded people who lived at Hurog made it an even more inviting target, more power for his Bane. And by now, he’d know we were keeping Kellen there.

We’d been counting on the winter to keep Hurog safe until improvements to the gate and walls could be completed, but we’d left the Bane out of our calculations. Jakoven would need no besieging army to take out Hurog with the Bane—not if he killed every person in Buril in a matter of hours.

If I were Jakoven, I would take Hurog next. Since I was the Hurogmeten instead, I had to stop him—and Garranon had just told me how I might do it.

Garranon had asked how far away the Bane had been from Buril. I’d come up with an interesting answer.