Bitterlich climbed up the back of a water jug as a mouse and surveyed the room over the lip. The guest rooms were usually sumptuously appointed with rope-sprung beds with feather mattresses and silk sheets, upholstered chairs, tapestries, and crystal lanterns. All of that luxury had been cleared away, and the rooms were as bare of ornament as a cowshed. The room was set up like the inside of an officer’s tent, with bedrolls, backpacks, military standards, and camp stools. Given the Vecci predilection for extravagant display, Bitterlich speculated that this minimalistic approach was a deliberate expression of ostentatious austerity, an outward representation of their vow of vengeance against the Maximi and their descendants.

Bitterlich tried to imagine generation after generation of Fenice hunters undertaking a vow of poverty and enduring monkish conditions to complete a quest only to find that it had already been achieved. They might find that sense of purpose, especially in the absence of any other raison d’être, a little hard to let go.

Pyros and his companions had put away their cappotto di piume, the layer of close feathers and scales that covered their bodies and served as armor. Only their distinctive crest feathers remained to mark them as sorcerers. Ultor lay on a folding table, just enough of the blade showing to draw the eye.

Quill bowed his head and took a knee before Pyros, kissing his ring. Then he stood and assumed the posture of a subordinate giving a report. Unfortunately, he spoke in Vecci, a language opaque to Bitterlich. Pyros referred to Ultor at least twice, and both times Quill made a negating gesture. Damn but Bitterlich wished he had some idea of what they were saying. Was he Pyros’s spy? What else could this meeting possibly mean?

The conversation did not last long. Quill knelt again, backed away, and departed.

Bitterlich squeezed himself out of the room and scurried along to follow the sagax.

Isabelle stood on a small wooden stool in Comtesse Coquetta’s dressing room, while the comtesse’s servants sewed her into a formal gown. Isabelle could have gone to tonight’s gala in her uniform, but the event was in honor of her friend Gretl and the inauguration of her teaching hospital, and Isabelle didn’t want to distract from the principal honoree by being any more outlandish than absolutely necessary.

Her head still droned with the voices of her ancestral chorus, but the silence potion had at least moved the party to a pantry in the back. She’d set her timepiece to alert her when the next draught was due.

Coquetta had put Isabelle in a deep-burgundy gown with just enough silver thread to flash in the presence of Isabelle’s spark swarm.

Coquetta was a bountifully built woman with a pile of blond hair and a pale-blue gown. She spoke with a gossip’s eager whisper: “Did you hear? Someone burned down the temple.”