“Security protocols,” Isabelle said. “Please tell her that I am en route to being recovered and to proceed with her briefing.”

“Ah. She says it’s about time you stopped malingering. Uh, is she this rude to everyone?”

“Only people she likes,” Bitterlich said. “She’s painfully polite to people she hates.”

Malgiers said, “I see. Impervia thanks Major Bitterlich for his most proper report. She also says that she has lately increased her counterintelligence pressure on the Maze of Eyes’s network within Rocher Royale and found it in unexpected disarray. Apparently several quiet but important Skaladin agents have been recently killed.”

“Which agents?” Bitterlich asked. It was an odd piece of information to pass downstream, but Impervia only sent facts she wanted him to follow up on.

She called them “Dogsbody, Whistler, and Milk. Does that mean anything to you?”

A cold trickle ran down Bitterlich’s spine and made his whiskers itch and twitch. “It means someone has crippled the tyrant’s spy network in Rocher Royale.”

“Would you like to unpack that?” Isabelle asked.

“Dogsbody, Whistler, and Milk were our code names for the tyrant’s spy handlers in Rocher Royale. They were the ones who passed information back to Skaladin.”

“So it’s a good thing they’re gone?” Malgiers asked uncertainly.

“Not at all,” Bitterlich said. “We never moved on them because it was far better to know who they were and to feed them the information we wanted them to have. This is a blow as much against Impervia’s network as the Maze of Eyes’s. Did she say who killed them? Or when?”

“She says the last time her people saw any of them alive was a red month ago.” That was the length of time it took the red moon Threin to make its orbital circuit. “That was before we left Rocher Royale.”

“Sacred saints,” Isabelle muttered, “Hasdrubal killed them.”

“What makes you think that?” Bitterlich asked.

“A few things,” Isabelle said. “If Impervia’s people didn’t do it, who else could have? As a premier agent of the Maze of Eyes, Hasdrubal would have had access to all three of them. That gives him opportunity.”

“What about motive?” Bitterlich asked.

Isabelle spoke more carefully, as if picking up finer threads. “We believe the tyrant sent Hasdrubal to help Lael overthrow Grand Leon. It must have seemed like a very economical way to disrupt l’Empire. But the first time I met him, Hasdrubal told me that Lael had rescued him from a cruel master. That could have just been a ruse, but what if it wasn’t? What if Lael really did set him free from the tyrant’s influence?”

“So let’s says he’s gone rogue,” Bitterlich said. “He knows he’s being watched, so he kills the spy marshals to make a break, but a break to where and for what purpose?”