Evie drops her head, her broad smile concealed there until she’s forced the expression into something more restrained.

When she turns around, Sirach is grinning through a face that’s been pummeled and sliced down the cheek by a close encounter with a Skrain sword.

“You look just awful,” Sirach says.

Evie nods. “I think we both forgot to duck.”

“Oh, I didn’t forget. Ducking is just so… expected.”

“I promise you,” Evie says, a new warmth replacing the chill that was threatening her spine, “you are never expected.”

“That is quite a compliment, General. And don’t tell me not to call you that.”

“I’m wearing the vest, aren’t I?”

“And you won the day.”

“We won the day,” Evie corrects her.

Sirach bows to her, grandly. “Fair enough.”

They seem to run out of words then. They stare at each other across a dozen slain bodies, and yet the blood and shit and carrion birds circling overhead aren’t enough to reclaim this moment from them.

Sirach’s expression turns unusually dour. “General, I must now ask you a very serious question.”

Evie is taken aback by the sudden change in mood. “What’s that?” she asks, tentative.

The grin returns to Sirach’s swollen lips. “Do you feel like laying siege to a Crachian keep?”

Evie sighs, somehow relieved despite the very real weight of the question. She sheathes the push dagger still clenched between her knuckles, returning it to the inside of her boot.

Evie stands tall, staring back confidently at Sirach.

“I’ll need a new sword,” she says.

IN THE HOUSE OF THE IGNOBLE

IT’S A FINER PRISON CELL than Lexi would have expected, to be sure.

She wakes with a dull and occasionally throbbing pain in what feels like the very pulpy back of her head. The bed beneath her is feather-soft, and large enough for Lexi to spread her arms akimbo without touching its edges. Four ornately carved posts supporting a silken canopy rise to the ceiling above her, and the sheets and pillows are even softer than the canopy appears to be.

Lexi is wearing the same clothes in which Daian took her. She doesn’t appear to have been molested in any way, beyond the fact she was bludgeoned with a knife pommel and kidnapped.

She rises from the luxurious bed and takes in her surroundings. The walls and the floor of the bedroom are heavy stone blocks draped with tapestry and rugs to hide their drab and rustic appearance. There’s a porcelain basin and chamber pot. A towering archway leads to another room beyond. It looks like a room from a castle ruin, before modern stone masons began striving for the smooth, angular perfection of the Spectrum’s construction.