Lady Kiradin stared up at the eastern window. Radiant Lumestra stared back, her expression frozen in coloured glass. Inscrutable, the both of them.

“I will not compound failure, captain.” Her gaze drifted to the two-score haggard prisoners at the church’s rear. “We’ve traitors enough to serve as example. Besides, young Viktor’s pride won’t let him stand apart. You may atone by making preparations for his arrival. This first failure I will generously discount. Further lapses? Well, those I’ll have no choice but to interpret as wilfulness. And the wilful do not prosper in my Tressia.”

Apara judged it no accident that Lady Kiradin’s iron stare took in Mannor and Rother, masters of the Prydonis and Sartorov chapter-houses. Lord Karev, commander of the 7th, had earlier been despatched to take charge of the city’s gates.

The citizenry might follow Lady Kiradin out of patriotic fervour, but the soldiery required guidance. And the soldiers’ commanders required . . . motivation. Motivation Apara’s cousins had provided through the seizing of loved ones. She wondered at the future Lady Kiradin sought to build on such foundations. Rother’s venomous glances suggested his leash had already stretched almost to breaking point. He was surely not alone.

“Are you struck by wilfulness, Captain Horden?”

“No.”

“Good. Do your duty.”

Straightening, Horden marched stiffly past the hushed choir of serenes and out into the grove.

Soft, bitter laughter echoed around the nave. Apara’s heart sank.

Ebigail turned slowly about, her expression cold as it fell upon her youngest daughter. Of all the church’s unwilling congregation, only Sevaka seemed without fear. Her hands bound and her face haggard, she hung from the arms of her hearthguard captors as one without the strength to stand. But still she burned with defiance.

“You find something amusing?” snapped Ebigail.

The laughter faded. “Don’t you see? The firmer you grip, the faster everything falls apart.”

Apara wordlessly pleaded her sister to silence. That Sevaka had survived was the only shaft of sunlight in troubled skies. She’d hoped the younger woman would have the wit to hold her tongue – that Lady Kiradin might stir herself to forgiveness. Those foolish hopes faded as Sevaka warmed to her theme.

“So certain in your strength,” she sneered. “The proud Kiradin matriarch. The rocky shore upon whom the waves of history break. But you’re blind. Too blind to see the lesson.”

“And what lesson is that?” Lady Kiradin advanced a pace with every crisply enunciated word.

“That the weak only need one another to be strong. I hope they tear you apart.”

Lady Kiradin trembled, her composure scattered to the winds. “My daughter is dead!” she screamed. “Set this prizrak on the pyre. I want to see it burn!”