I’d burned the letter from the Shardless Few as soon as I’d finished with it. Letting someone find it would have been quite the way to get my head chopped off. I could imagine what my mother would say to that: “Careless, leaving such things lying about! Foolish boy. You deserved to get your head chopped off!” I peered into the darkness of the hold, the small candle in my hand lighting only what was in front of me. I didn’t dare come in here with a lamp swinging from my hand. The deck rolled beneath me, though I kept my feet steady. The Endless Sea rarely rested easy in a wet season. They were burning witstone above-deck to keep the sails filled in the right direction, and both Mephi and Thrana had retreated below where they couldn’t smell it. Burning witstone made Thrana as sick as it did Mephi.

I felt bad for the beasts, since they so clearly enjoyed racing from prow to stern and leaping into the waves – but Lin had made it clear: we needed to make good time on this trip. I’d wanted to argue – I’d found my distaste for witstone growing the longer I spent with Mephi – but I’d sparked enough arguments with the Emperor. I could imagine my mother watching me again, scowling her disapproval, wondering if I was aiming for execution or if I was just stupid.

More and more these days I felt like the latter.

If the Emperor was the mortar, then the Shardless Few were the pestle, and I was the hapless grain being crushed between them. A white-bladed sword in the Emperor’s possession, they’d written. Steal it. Yes, a simple enough task for a folk hero who’d had songs written about him. I might have survived the assassin’s poisoning, but I knew I was still all too mortal. My flesh might mend, my blood might purge itself, but I doubted my head could reknit itself to my neck if I was caught. Not something I was keen on finding out.

Boxes of old books met my gaze, four ornate chests filled with shards, various crates of food and sundries. I’d thought, when I’d been in that cavern below the palace, trapped with the monstrous construct, that I’d seen a sword hanging on the wall. I could have been mistaken – after all, I’d had other things to worry about. But I’d watched the servants carrying their cargo below decks and had seen another chest being brought to Lin’s room. A chest I’d seen in the hidden caves below the palace. If she’d brought that, she might have brought the sword.