“Mup,” he mumbled, and rolled sideways off his bunk. He desperately wanted to flop down again and die; his body felt nine kinds of sore from the trauma of the exercise the day before and the night’s adventures. He hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. The book, he thought, and grabbed for it and the sheaf of translated pages. He stuffed it into the smuggling harness, which was getting a good deal too crowded for safety, then threw on a robe to answer the summons.

Glain stood there, crisply uniformed, and she said, “Unplanned exercise. Get ready. It’s our last one. Thirty minutes.”

“Glain—” But she was already moving on to knock at another door. He’d hoped to find a moment to talk. But this wasn’t the right one. Maybe that was better saved for after, when all this was done, and he could guide her more gently through the levels of shock, grief, and anger that he’d already experienced.

Dressed and fortified with a cup of sweet Egyptian coffee, he jogged with his squad to the training grounds and their assigned place to form up on the field. Other squads were coming, too, but none, Jess saw, had beaten them there.

Glain hadn’t made the run with them.

She isn’t here.

He realized that only as they formed their rank and stood at attention. It wasn’t just unusual for Glain to be missing, it had never happened, and he exchanged a sidelong glance with the young man to his right—Tariq, who’d shot him the day before—without moving another muscle. Tariq seemed calm, but he was already sweating. The loud morning tone sounded from the top of the High Garda watchtower, and . . . Glain still didn’t appear. Other squads were inspected and dismissed. Jess’s group stood silent in the hot sun, at attention. If the others worried as much as he did, they were too well trained to speak.

Finally, Jess saw one of the Garda’s armored carriers speeding across the ground; his eyes tracked it as it approached them. Glain Wathen jumped out almost before the hissing steam-powered vehicle came to a halt. She was followed by someone Jess recognized only slightly: High Garda Captain Feng, who was smiling this morning, though his eyes were like chips of cold black ice. Feng had never appeared on the parade ground before. Never interacted with their squad at all. He had quite a reputation as a hard man to please.

From the rank behind him, Jess heard someone take in a startled breath, but he concentrated on staying as still as he could. Feng’s gaze—cold and impersonal—swept over each of them as he walked the rank. He gave Jess exactly the same assessment as the others, no longer or shorter, and said nothing until he reached the end of his inspection and returned, with Glain, to stand before them. He and the young squad leader were silhouetted by the merciless glow of the rising sun. It effectively hid their expressions.