The Duchess of Venike was right behind his commander, but her eyes went unerringly to Brown. “Did you get him?” she asked.

Brown shook his head. “It’s a fairly complex matter,” he said. “But the Patriarch is inarguably dead.”

Sauce waited until the two company doctors and Tancreda were clearly at work, and then she went up the mill steps with the duchess, Brown, Donna Beatrice, and Daniel Favour.

“Who are they?” she asked from the landing.

Brown followed her finger. “Captain, that’s M’bub Ali. He is . . . hmm. An officer of the Sultan.”

The duchess nodded. “Alison, they helped us at Mitla; seems like years ago. They were here to scout the Darkness.”

“Spies,” Alison said.

“Allies,” Giselle said.

“Good allies,” Brown muttered. He handed over a long bundle. “Fell Sword. It had it.”

Sauce raised an eyebrow. But she shrugged and continued up the steps to the room that had once been occupied by the mill’s owners. There her body squire poured wine and Brown slumped into a chair.

“Not used to all these people,” he muttered.

Giselle smiled. “But the Patriarch is dead.”

Brown told the story, drinking his wine. He told it sparely but professionally, and they asked him questions, and then they asked Donna Beatrice questions, and then they ate a light meal, and by then Long Paw was awake and more himself.

“What was it, Paw?” Sauce asked.

Long Paw shook his head. “Never seen anything like it,” he said.

Tancreda had all her patients treated; her healing skills were minimal, but with two doctors to support her, she had stabilized M’bub Ali and saved both of his men, and Long Paw’s poison was wearing off of its own accord, hurried along by wine. She joined them on the first floor and sipped some sweet white wine herself. She listened to Long Paw’s description and then, with his help, drew a picture of a sucker-faced greyhound with hands instead of paws and long, thorny talons.

“Eeeuuuwww,” she said in disgust.

Donna Beatrice shuddered. “I will see it until I die,” she said in Etruscan.

Tancreda copied out their description of it, alive, and went downstairs with her wine to the blood-soaked bag that contained the thing’s mortal remains.

“Oh, sweet Christ,” she muttered. She summoned the others so that they could see that the thing had rotted almost to nothing—foul slime and a heavy hide and some bones, like something a month in the ground.

Brown shrugged. “It was in the Patriarch,” he said. “When I think about it, I have to wonder if there was one in the Duke of Mitla.”

“Blessed Virgin,” Sauce spat. “Worms and fire dogs.”

“Salamanders,” Long Paw said. “That’s what they are.”

Sauce read over Tancreda’s coded dispatch. She wrote Salamander in her own hand under the sketch. And then, in her own code, she wrote, I think we’ve found Kronmir’s fourth player. She looked up, sighed for a lost opportunity, and wrote, I’ll be marching north tomorrow.