“Hide away your Haunts until they’re fully turned.” Asan leaned back. “Then, under a reasonable pretext, gather both your enemies and the two Sisters most likely to be the Renewer. Release the monsters, watch who they run to, let the carnage unfold. Snatch your prize out of the Haunt’s claws at the last moment.”

“After you and Rhyanon are dead.”

“It’s a very convenient tragedy, and almost impossible to link back to the perpetrators. Celane wasn’t even there, so her hands stay clean. Luckily for me, Morwin miscalculated when she tried to force her little accident.” Asan shook her head bitterly. “Clumsy, really. With that much lace at her disposal, she could have pushed much harder.”

I remembered the look on Morwin’s face when I had stopped her lace. She had not believed it would take more power. Why should she? Asan had made a point to tell Herald Lien that she had not performed the rite recently. The Commander should have been defenceless.

“You made sure that Morwin would underestimate you,” I said.

Asan sighed. “To be honest, I thought Jiana might try to knock me off the roof. I wanted to force her into the open before the Haunt demanded my attention.”

“You had a protective net in place the whole time?”

“Only on the roof. After that, I was, well, distracted. Hayder says that you shielded my back in the basement. Thank you for that.”

“But … but did she really think she could hold off both Haunts on her own?”

“Raughn, you need to understand—the lacework that Sisters currently wield? Pathetic, compared to the works of our predecessors. But gorging gives you a glimpse into what’s really possible with sufficient raw power. It’s…” She paused. “It’s completely different. Frightening, but the sense of invincibility is more than a little intoxicating. I mean, just consider the fact that, all those centuries ago, the Eater lifted all of Aytrium into the sky. Imagine having that kind of power, imagine what you could—”

She noticed my expression and stopped talking. The fervour faded from her face.

“But then there’s the cost,” she said softly. “And the question of who must pay it.”

I smiled thinly. “From what I can gather, payment is the Renewer’s responsibility, Commander.”

She pressed the back of her hands together in the gesture for vow-taking, a sign usually reserved for commitments to the Eater.

“Not while I have anything to do with it,” she said.

I was too taken aback to react, then quickly gestured negation. “There’s no need for that, I was only joking.”

She reaffirmed the gesture, then lowered her hands.

“I will not see you martyred, Raughn,” she said. “Not just because it would be a terrible and cruel waste, but because it goes against my most ardently held principle.”

“What principle?”

Asan smiled wryly. “That we can be better than this.”