His eyes met the stare of another, someone he barely recognized. Too pale. Skin lined as though three decades older than his true age. The face that looked back at him from the mirror in the small room he’d rented in a seedy neighborhood in Dunmire looked weak, scared. He stalked toward that face, anger flaring. His fist met mirrored glass with a crunch, pain crackling along his knuckles. His own blood flowed freely, mixing with that of the idiots. It made him feel better, so he repeated the motion, cracks spiderwebbing up and down the mirror, sharp pieces breaking free and tinkling to the floor at his feet.

This is who you are now, came that voice, pouncing right when he least expected it to. What you are. Shattered glass. A shard whose only purpose is to cut.

“I’m not,” he seethed through bared teeth. “I’m not.” He sank to his knees, tears streaming freely. Eventually, his tears dried up. Eventually, he washed the bloodstains from his hands in a washbasin provided to him when he paid for his room. Eventually, he got back to work, slipping from the window and back out into the ambivalent night.

Comman Dur was close now. So close. And while after his improbable escape Cainan wouldn’t be inside the prison, he wouldn’t be far away either.

And Korsiris was patient. He would wait as long as it took for his little fly to buzz right into his web.

Twenty-One

Soraya

Seer, Finfalla

“Did you know?” Soraya demanded, as she stormed toward Saman Ji. The old woman was in her usual spot pretending to beg for coin. Soraya was dimly aware that her raised voice and hard stride was gaining notice from others in the marketplace, but at the moment her anger was as unbridled as it had ever been.

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“You lied to us.”

“By some definitions, maybe.”

“By any definition.”

“You asked too many of the wrong questions, and I don’t know you. I don’t know your intentions. Your honor.”

“We’re trying to save lives.”

“Whose lives? The lives of a bunch of strangers living in a town you’ve only just set foot in? Hmm. Now sit down, ye’re attractin’ far too much attention, and even the best folks in this town are likely to set their mouths a-waggin’ to the Knightguard.”

Soraya had so much energy buzzing through her, that all she wanted to do was run, or kick a stone, or throw something, but instead she did as she was told, slumping down beside the old woman, back pressed to the wall. She sighed. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Ye’re askin’ me, or askin’ yerself?”

“Definitely not you.”