“Our army is too small. Yes, there’s us three Alanga. I shake a little earth, move a little air, Ragan comes in with some water, you do… whatever you feel up to doing. We can come up with a strategy or a plan, but I can count.” I ticked off three fingers. “That’s us.”

“Perhaps you would do better to criticize less and remember your place more,” she snapped back.

It felt like being physically struck. I knew I’d been pushing her away, and with good reason, but I’d thought we could at least be friends. I knew my place – half-Poyer, erstwhile smuggler, a man who had only been elevated by her good graces. I just wished she hadn’t been the one to remind me of it. “Nisong was right,” I said before I could stop myself. “You do sound like your father.”

She didn’t deflate, but she didn’t get angry either. Instead, her expression turned brittle, like the slightest blow could shatter her, could scatter her to the four winds. “Maybe he’d have a better solution to all this. I just want to keep this Empire safe. From all threats.”

I wished I could take back my words. Again, I wondered if she knew she was not the Emperor’s daughter. Did she even know who she was? Perhaps she’d never intended to deceive anyone. I thought of the letter to the Shardless Few I’d still not sent. I could destroy her with a few words.

She suddenly straightened. “She thinks she’s so superior now that she can make her own constructs. But she’s not the only one who can do that. She’s not the only one who can modify them.” She reached into her sash pocket and pulled out her engraving tool. “We have shards,” she was saying. “I can ask permission to use them. If I can get my hands on a body, I can make a construct to infiltrate her camp. It can alter the commands of her constructs. And then the numbers will be more in our favor.” She finished, breathless. “We can still make this work.”

She will use it again, if she feels she needs to. I remembered my bold assertions to Gio, that Lin was different, that she was foregoing bone shard magic. And here she was, proving him right and proving me wrong yet again. My throat felt raw, like I’d swallowed thorns. “So how do you word that so it’s palatable, exactly?”

“Word what?”

“Permission,” I said.

“Jovis,” she said, “I’m not doing this to keep or maintain power. I’m doing this to save all our hides.”

“Your father said the same thing.”

“He was afraid.”

“And you’re not?”