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.

“This isn’t what I thought you meant!” she said accusingly to the air, or the cloaks, or the living captain—it was hard to be sure. “This isn’t what I intended, at all!”

“Someone must bear the blame.” Lord Radas touched his arrow to Miken’s chest. “You are all traitors. Murderers! Do you deny it?”

Miken sobbed.

“So are you judged,” said Lord Radas.

Miken exhaled sharply, his hand raised to grasp at a flicker of light that sparked before his face, then fell. He was dead.

“But you commanded us to kill them!” cried the militia captain.

“Did you commit the act?” asked the cloak of night from the speaker’s platform.

Crouched by Kedi’s lifeless body, Marit watched the murderers fall one by one, all but the merchant woman, who collapsed in a babble of hysteria. She rose, sheathing her sword.

“This one, who lied about her name, is also a traitor.” Lord Radas pointed his arrow at her.

“You can’t kill me,” said Marit, edging toward Warning. “I’m already dead.”