“Lord Radas’s pleasure is fear. That’s why he commands the army.”

“Who commands Lord Radas?”

“She is very old, although she doesn’t look it. What she is truly, I do not understand.”

“But she wears a Guardian’s cloak.” She thought of the night she had watched a woman walk out of the forest and, without touching them, kill two reeves. “A cloak of night, spanned with stars. She—whoever she is—and Lord Radas discovered how to kill Guardians, and then took their cloaks for their own. Find out how to kill a Guardian, Hari, and tell me, and then I promise you, if it’s still your choice, that I will release you if it is in my power. After I have destroyed them.”

“You’ll never manage it.”

He walked farther into the night, until she could not see him. Trees sighed in a wind out of the south, running up the river from the distant ocean, carrying the promise of more rain. They had camped on a stretch of beach where a bend in the river had led the current to undermine the far shore and smooth this one. Thorns bristled in plenty to shelter them from patrols, and stands of smoke tree and northern pipe separated them from the Istri Walk, a screen against prying eyes.

She walked back to the fire.

Without looking up, the spy said, “Folk are saying the Guardians were murdered. That demons took their place for the power they could wield.”

“It’s an explanation,” she agreed.

After a while, he spoke again. “My name’s Miken. Toskala’s council sent me and four others to spy out Wal-show, but I was caught in High Haldia. I don’t know what became of the others. It’s true I have a sister in High Haldia. That’s why I went there.”

The truth stings.

She looked away, reaching for the bag of provisions. “You want more rice? Maybe some wine to wash it down?”

“Why did you save me?”

He had a cautious gaze, and she found that if she struggled to draw an imagined curtain between her and him, his thoughts did not overwhelm her. He had nice eyes, but his face was thinned with hunger and hollow with the pain he still endured from the aftermath of beatings and then the final hanging, for he’d told his captors everything and they had laughed at his weakness.

“I was a reeve, once. In my heart, I’m still a reeve.”

He indicated Hari’s presence beyond the light. “What about the outlander?”

“Listen, Miken. You can go free now, make your own way. You can travel with us, pretend to be my prisoner or my hireling. We’re headed for the army. I’ll try to get you back into Toskala, but there’s no guarantee I can manage it.”

“I’ll never know if it’s true or not, what you’re saying.”

“No, you won’t. But I give my oath as an apprentice to the Lady, where I took my year’s service, that I’m telling you the truth. It’s her honor I hold in my hands when I tell you that if I can bring them down, I will.”