Rosario shakes his head. “I’m worried it will be Red.”

Iván’s gaze snaps to mine. “That night in the barracks. When the Ciénega del Sur boys attacked you. Do you think someone planned that?”

“Maybe? They blamed me for what happened to Valentino. But . . .”

Rosario leans forward. “I heard you got the best of them, that you weren’t seriously wounded.”

“Yes, but I think they would have hurt me badly if Iván and I had let them.”

“Make no mistake,” Iván says. “They tried to kill you.”

“I’m not sure that’s—”

Rosario says, “Is it possible someone put them up to it? Encouraged them?”

“It’s possible,” I concede. “Though I can’t imagine who.”

“Perhaps it was Conde Astón himself,” Iván says. “He’s their liege lord, right? He hates you, Red. The way he talked about you during dinner made me want to . . .”

I peer closer at him, as if I can make him finish his thought with the force of my will, but he clamps his mouth shut and looks away.

“Speaking of the high conde,” I say. “Rosario, do you know if Astón ever took to the sand?”

“He did. As a young man, he served two years as a recruit under my grandfather, King Nicalao. He was never a serious candidate. Like a lot of inheriting noble sons, he did it to make connections and acquire extra training.”

“So those could have been his boots after all.”

“Red, what are you talking about?” Iván says.

“The man who walked in on us while we were searching Bolivar’s quarters. I think it might have been Astón.”

Rosario frowns. “Tell me about this.”

So we do. We tell him about finding the tamarind candies, about hiding under the bed while someone searched the room, about trying and failing to get a message to him through the stable hand.

“And you think the person who walked in and ransacked the room was Conde Astón?” Rosario says.

I shrug. “Whoever it was had huge feet, a slightly inward-facing stride, and really old, dingy, Guard-issue boots.”

“We have looked and looked,” Iván says. “No one currently serving in the Guard meets that description. Come to think of it, Sergeant DeLuca would strip the hide off anyone who showed up for duty wearing boots in such bad shape.”

Rosario is suddenly crestfallen. He rubs at the imaginary line on the table with his thumb, over and over, until I worry he’ll rub his skin off.

“Rosario?”

“I was terrible in there!” he blurts. “At dinner. He made me so mad, and I just . . . froze. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and now it turns out he might be my greatest enemy.”

“You did well!” I protest. “Truly. The conde is the one who made a fool of himself.”

“If you say so.”

“Which you probably remember did not go unnoticed by the ambassador?”

I’m relieved to see a slight grin. “It’s true that Songbird put him in his place. And Carilla.”