Something terrible was going to happen.

“An ill day,” said she who wore the cloak of night. “Trouble has risen to plague the Hundred. We the Guardians have returned on this day to restore peace.”

As in the old days with Flirt, when the raptor’s excitement at a reckless maneuver had burned in her blood as well, Marit grinned as she took the plunge. She stood in her stirrups.

“Don’t believe her! These are ones who command the army that assaults Toskala. As we are speaking, in the city below, the gates have been opened by traitors and your enemy marches in. Don’t trust them!”

One of the reeves stood, an older man whose black hair was streaked with silver. “Who are you? You look like a reeve who died twenty years ago. A dear friend of mine. Her eagle was slaughtered on the Iliyat Pass and yet her own body was never found. Who are you?”

Lamplight flashed off a mirrored surface, illuminating his face. Aui! She hadn’t recognized him. The years had not been kind, not in the way they had been to Joss. “Kedi?”

“Marit? Eiya! You have the same voice! Yet you’ve not aged a day. Commander, this is a ghost or a demon. How can it wear Marit’s face?”

“Marit!” said Lord Radas beside her. “I recall you now. You are the foreseen traitor. ‘One among the Guardians will betray her companions.’ ”

“Kedi, I beg you, believe me for the sake of the friendship we shared. They mean to betray you, they have already a plan in place, you are in danger—”

Of course they ran a hundred mey ahead of her down this road, swords and knives drawn before the words left her mouth. A militia captain stabbed the man beside him. Three council members turned on their own. The guardsmen standing behind the reeves drove knives into unprotected backs. By the time she got her sword out, those not yet dead were being swarmed by the killers.

“Kedi!”

Lord Radas reined his horse into hers, forcing her back. She slid off one side as Warning flicked a wing half open, and crawled under the horse’s belly. A tremor stirred beneath the planking, a whispering pulse she recognized as the tracery of a Guardian’s altar hidden under the Assizes Tower. Her skin throbbed, gooseflesh rising.

Coming up, she found herself face-to-face with Miken, the spy. “They caught me on the river,” he murmured, and his blood-soaked shame pressed like a blade at her throat.

I had to kill, in exchange for the lives of my sister and her children.

“They’ve lied to you,” she said.

She pushed past him, but the senior staff of Clan Hall were dead, dispatched cleanly. Despite being inside the tower, and with the riot of sound aloft in the air outside drowning out much else, she felt more than actually heard the distinctive squalls of eagles sundered from the bond that jesses them to their reeves.

Three of the killers knelt, heads bowed. A fourth was doubled over, fluid leaking out where he’d been stabbed by someone who had, briefly, fought back. Five guardsmen and merchants remained standing, weapons poised, but there was no one left to kill except a single gasping woman dressed in a merchant’s tabard badged with a green sun.