“See.”

Lady Eudokia tossed three tiny twigs onto the fire. The choking scent of camphor filled Hanna’s lungs and made her eyes water and her head pound. She saw flames, burning and burning, and although the smoke and incense made her eyes sting, she kept staring into the dance of fire.

Let them believe she was only a breath away from success.

“Nothing,” said Lady Eudokia, but she sounded curious more than disgusted. “We may as well cavort naked with the fire worshipers as stare at these coals.”

The general had not moved, but Hanna felt his presence as a threat. “Is she lying, Exalted Lady?”

“I think she is not lying. I see only flames.”

“If we do not need her, then …”

“Let us not be hasty, General. You are thinking as a soldier in battle. Think rather that those who brought this storm down upon us may have survived. I do not know what powers they hold to themselves. If they have the ability to cloud Eagle’s Sight, we must consider what is best for us. Hold the Eagle in reserve, in case matters change.”

“What if it takes years?”

She lifted a hand in a lazy gesture of disinterest. “I have an aunt who has for twenty-eight years resided in the convent of St. Mary of Gesythan. It is better for the family that she remain alive than that she be killed. None leave that isolation once they are banished within. This one can be placed in the convent as well.”

“She is a westerner and thus a heretic.”

“True enough. She need not receive every comfort, as do the others.”

He scratched his neck again, leaving a trail of rashy red. “A good enough plan. But I agree only on the condition that she remain in my custody until that time, and that I be granted leave to visit her there whenever I wish.”

“If my nephew becomes emperor, General, then these are no obstacles.”

He nodded. She clapped her hands, and the eunuchs wiped her face again before moving back so the servants could carry her away. As the tent flap closed behind her retinue, the general turned to the soldiers waiting respectfully behind him. He pointed. A captain dressed in a blue tabard came forward and began delivering his report, but Hanna was too dizzy with fear to catch more than scraps of phrases:

“… may be the same bandits who shadow us … may be another group … scouts can never find them … nay, never a trace …”

She ought to memorize each utterance, to hoard them like the treasures they were. She was an Eagle. What she heard, she remembered. What she remembered, she could report to her regnant just as this man reported to his. But she could not concentrate because she could not banish from her mind a vision of whitewashed walls surrounding her, too high to be climbed and without any gate for escape.

A pair of servants trudged in bearing buckets of water. They set them down and busied themselves with the pitcher and basin. Her eyes were still stinging. As much as she swallowed, she could not get all her fear and frustration and anger down.