She hoped the queen really did have ulterior motives. Ayla couldn’t see herself being any good at cracking a coded language, no matter how clever she was. There were a thousand different kinds of cleverness, weren’t there? Ayla was body clever. Scrappy. She had a certain quickness on her feet, thanks to Rowan. The long afternoons of sparring with Benjy in the middle of Rowan’s cottage, once nearly falling backward right into the hearth fire. She’d been trained well. Going suddenly limp—that was all Rowan. Takes ’em by surprise every time, she said. Ayla had asked: Exactly how many times have you needed a quick escape? And Rowan had just grinned, skin wrinkling like old leather around her eyes.

Thinking of Rowan hurt like a snapped bone.

Ayla had been nine years old when the sovereign’s men raided her village and burned it to the ground. The only reason she’d survived was Storme. He’d shoved her into the outhouse, into the pitch-black hole where human waste was pooled knee-deep. By the time she emerged, her entire family was dead—or so she’d thought. She didn’t remember the details of the following weeks. Somehow, she’d made her way down the rocky coast to the village of Kalla-den. But the northern winter never passed without claiming a few lives, and Ayla—small, starving, wracked with grief—would have been one of them. It was Rowan who found her on the snowy streets. Took her in, warmed and fed her, said, Stay, little bird, stay as long as you like. Benjy had a similar story: abandoned as a newborn, raised in a temple. At nine, he ran away to join the Revolution. Rowan found him and took him under her wing. She was always doing that over the years: mothering lost children, feeding travelers and runaways and anyone who needed it, no matter how young or old.

But she wasn’t just a guardian. She was a revolutionary, too. The head of a whisper network, the center of the Resistance in northern Rabu. It was Rowan, too, who had understood Ayla’s need for revenge better than anyone.

It was Rowan who’d died on an Automa’s sword. Right in front of Ayla. Not even three weeks ago. And it hurt. It hurt, and unlike a snapped bone, Ayla didn’t think this would heal.

Ayla took a deep breath, hoping the queen wouldn’t notice.

“I can’t promise anything,” she said. “But I’ll try.”

Queen Junn leaned forward. Her eyes were the light brown of driftwood. “Let me make one thing very clear,” she said quietly. “If the tides turn my way, Scyre Kinok will be dead by midsummer. And the tides always turn my way, handmaiden Ayla. If there is a force in this world, godly or not, it favors me.”

“You rely on good fortune?” Ayla asked, trying to temper her shock. The queen planned to eradicate Kinok. “You rely on gods and stars?”

“I rely on myself,” said Junn. “Favored or not.”

Ayla took another sip of too-hot tea, considering. She didn’t think for a second that killing Kinok was Junn’s only goal—after all, what did she stand to gain from his death? There were probably a dozen other plans, a dozen other schemes kept close to the chest, hidden in the shadows. Agreeing to work for Junn felt like walking blindfolded into a pitch-black room, knowing full well the floor was covered with mousetraps and proceeding anyway. But . . .