“I’m sorry. I was just startled by coming across him like that, so suddenly.”

“I didn’t mean you. You’ll learn in time to feel the presence of another before you meet. I meant rather his difficult circumstances. Bevard is not a true leader; he’s working beyond his capabilities, not a problem you will have, I feel sure. Just be patient.”

Just be patient, Marit thought. Be patient, and learn everything you can. She looked up, and the woman smiled so reassuringly that Marit opened her mouth to confess her real name. Warning stamped. Marit shut her mouth, leashing her bowl to her belt.

“What now?” she asked as she rose.

“We must cut short our journey and return to Toskala. Or I must, to oversee our meeting with the Toskala council.”

“With Toskala’s council? May I attend?”

“You are free to attend, if you wish.”

Was it a genuine offer, or a test? If ever there was a person Marit could not comprehend, this woman was that one, calm, thoughtful, and yet nameless. Only demons have no names.

“I’ll come with you.”

She nodded, as if she had expected that answer all along.

BUT WHEN THEY returned to the army’s camp outside the walls of Toskala, Marit found herself observing a council of war. The flavor of the air and the tension in the stances of the soldiers assembled in the tent kept her alert.

Lord Radas paced beside a large table on which lay a map of the city and the surrounding environs. “At the sixth bell, tonight, the gates of Toskala will be opened, and we will march in.”

The hells! She’d missed something major, for sure.

“At first, there will likely be resistance from certain elements of Toskala’s militia. Afterward, due to confusion sown in their ranks by our allies, we will triumph. Let this command pass back through the ranks, cohort commanders to company captains, company captains to cadre sergeants, and sergeants to each member of their cadre. Kill those who fight. The others, do not touch. Each soldier among you will be judged, and those who have broken this command will meet justice, which is death.”

Marit twitched the hanging aside to look into the smaller interior room behind, where Hari lay on a carpet. His cloak still smothered him, but his chest rose and fell. Otherwise he gave no sign of being alive. Kirit, sitting in silence beside Marit, looked in, too, and her grim little face creased in such a grim little frown that Marit wished heartily she could know what the outlander was thinking, or what the girl had seen or heard during the days Marit and the woman wearing the cloak of night had been away from camp.

“How much fighting can we expect, lord?” asked one of the commanders, addressing the map. “Maybe some have allied themselves with us, but the rest of the defenders will fight fiercely since they are fresh, lacking neither food nor water and with their courage still high. Might we not sit out the siege a while longer to sap their strength?”