Pelaya wondered what Teloni thought armies carried heavy cannons around for if not to fire them. “Unless he brings that army up to the Salamander Gate and fires into the city from that side.” She felt almost cruel saying it.

Teloni’s eyes went wild and she stumbled as they reached the landing at the base of the stairs; Pelaya had to grab her sister’s sleeve. “He wouldn’t!”

Pelaya realized there was nothing she could do by talking, even about truthful things, except make life worse for her sister, and soon thereafter, for her mother and the little ones as well. She gave Teloni’s arm a quick squeeze.

“I’m sure you’re right. Go tell Mama. I’ll be there in a short while—I need to go do something.”

Her older sister watched in openmouthed astonishment as Pelaya abruptly turned and darted across the hall toward the gardens. “What…where are you going?”

“Go to Mama, Teli! I’ll be there soon!”

She cut through the Four Sisters Courtyard and very nearly ran headlong into a colum of citadel guards wearing the Dragonfly on their sky-blue surcoats, the symbol of the old Devonai kings, still the touchstone for legitimacy in Hierosol centuries after the last of them had reigned. The guards, who in ordinary circumstances would have at least paused to let her by, hardly even broke stride, booted feet slapping on the floor as they hurried on, their faces set in looks so firm-jawed and unrevealing it made her chest hurt.

Surely Babba’s right—the autarch must know better than to try to conquer Hierosol. No one has ever managed in a thousand years! But she couldn’t believe things would be quite so easy. She felt a disturbing thrill in the air, like a wind carrying scents from savage foreign lands. Even the bells finally falling silent did not make the world seem any less strange; if anything, the silence that followed seemed to quiver just as dangerously as it had while the bells clamored.

Olin Eddon was just being led back inside by his guards when she reached the garden. After a few moments’ discussion, he managed to convince them to let him linger for a moment at the wall on the side of the garden that looked out across the low western roofs of the palace and the seawall, out across the strait and, beside it, the wide, green ocean. The water, despite the chill wind that circled through the garden, looked smooth as the marble of a painted statue. She remembered what her father had said about the western forts and looked out toward the peninsula, but she could see nothing there except a bank of mist; the water of the strait and the gray morning sky seemed to blur together into a single vagueness.

“I did not expect to see you today, and certainly not so early.” His smile was a little sad. He looked thinner than the last time she’d seen him. “Don’t you have your lessons in the morning? Sor Lyris will be angry.”