Evie takes a deep, resolute breath. “No, we have to. Right now Crache can still control what’s happened here, or at least the knowledge of it. As long as they have that they’ll do everything they can to quietly wipe us out before the people learn about what we’ve done. There’ll be no bargaining with them until we hold something real.”

“One of their cities,” Sirach says.

“One of their cities.”

“And you truly think they’ll bargain with us?”

“I have to hope. Taking the Tenth City will be a miracle, even with more of your people and every band of B’ors within two hundred miles. Holding it will be impossible.”

“We’ve defied the odds thus far,” Sirach muses. “Largely thanks to that beautiful mind of yours, of course.”

“Then let’s hope I don’t run dry of ideas.”

Sirach glances over her shoulder at the closed door to their quarters, more precisely at the shadow of two large boots eclipsing much of the torchlight streaming under the bottom of that door.

“Do you think Bam is jealous?” she asks Evie quietly. “Or do you think he’s enjoyed the sounds escaping this room as of late?”

“I didn’t ask him to stand guard,” Evie reminds her. “I never do. I hope it hasn’t hurt him. He has a good heart. Simple. There’s not enough simple in our world.”

Sirach ponders that silently for a moment before saying, “Well then… should we invite him to join us?”

Evie’s head turns toward her, both her brows raised high and tight.

“Is that something you’d enjoy?”

Sirach shrugs. “I suppose I think about it the way I thought when you first proposed, after a life spent killing every Savage I see, that I ally myself with them to attack the largest nation in the known history of the world.”

“And what did you think?” Evie asks.

Sirach’s grin is an animal flash of teeth in the dark.

“It sounds like a good time,” she says.

THE GRAY AFTER THE STORM

THE PLANNER’S HIDDEN CHAMBER WITHIN the Cadre is unusually empty. Dyeawan’s tender is parked in the spot formerly reserved for Edger’s seat at the concentric stone circles that serve as the planner’s meeting table. She is the winding slab’s sole occupant. Quan serves her hot tea in a small cup. The attendant is forced to double his body over to pour the steaming, camellia-scented concoction. He still wears the black band of mourning around the right sleeve of his brown tunic.

“Thank you,” Dyeawan says. “You really needn’t fuss over me so, Mister Quan.”

“It is what he would have wanted,” Quan insists. “You were as a daughter to him.”