“There’s no way to know anything for certain. If Kendara revealed my identity to the queen, then why would she be missing now?” Until I hear confirmation from Kendara’s own lips, I have to trust that it wasn’t her. “What would the queen hope to gain from having me attacked?”

“Maybe she wanted you to awaken your magic?” Saengo suggests.

My fingers trace over the wax seal, following the shape of the swords. “Ronin said that moments of high stress force a shaman to awaken their craft if a spirit is nearby. But it might not have worked. I might have been killed instead. Why take such a gamble?”

“It is a peculiar way to go about things,” she agrees. “If Queen Meilyr wants war, she could hire shamans to attack her borders and claim they were under the Empire’s orders. And if she knew that you’re shamanborn and wanted you to awaken your craft, then why not send you to Ronin to help you do it the normal way?”

“She wouldn’t do that. She’d never appear to help shamanborn.”

Saengo’s nose wrinkles. “A fair point. But still, it’s all rather roundabout.”

“Maybe it’s intentional? She wouldn’t want any of it tracing back to her. If I died in the attack, she could claim the Empire targeted her future Shadow and go to war with them. But since I awakened my craft instead, then she gets to claim I was planted by the Nuvali as a spy.”

“And go to war with them,” she finishes for me.

“It’s stupid, but I’d thought stopping a war would win me her favor. A war would devastate the kingdom and cost thousands of Eveywnian lives. I hadn’t considered that war could be what she wants.”

“It’s not the first conclusion I would have drawn, either.”

“But why me?” I say, frustrated that I’m missing some vital piece of information. “Hiring shamans to kill any of Kendara’s pupils would have been enough to claim a threat to her future Shadow. Was it for the convenience of getting rid of me as well?”

“She must not have known about you for long, or why would she have allowed Kendara to take you on as a pupil?” She frees the letter from my grip and tucks the card with my name on it back inside.

I shake my head, suddenly realizing that we’ve strayed from our immediate problem, which is the Dead Wood. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. Since I didn’t learn anything about Ronin in Vos Gillis, I’m going to have to sneak back into that maze and see what he’s hiding. It’s bound to reveal something about his secrets.”

“Like a giant spider?”