Janus looked away, at the column marching past. Evening was beginning to fall, and the light had turned soft and buttery, painting the brown grass of the hillside so it looked as if it were cast from gold. The silence stretched on, until Winter thought she’d offended the general. When he spoke, though, it was not the dismissal she expected.

“Someone had to do it,” he said.

There was another pause. Winter blinked. “That’s it?”

Janus shrugged. “Anyone could see the crisis was coming. The king dying, the princess too young, Orlanko too powerful, and the Black Priests . . . It was going to explode, one way or another. The wrong ruler, at the wrong time, can mean decades of poverty and war. Farus the Third, the Wastrel King, let the nobles steal the kingdom from under his nose. Farus the Fifth, Farus the Great, was so in love with his own face that he bankrupted the state building grand monuments. Only the right person could keep us from disaster.”

“And you’re the right person?” Winter said.

Janus smiled, and fixed her with his fathomless gaze. His eyes blazed in the soft light.

“Of course,” he said.

“You didn’t believe him?” Abby said.

They were in Winter’s tent, after dinner. The camp was in a pasture by the side of the road, and the outer pickets had to fend off determined attempts by inquisitive cows to breach the perimeter. Whoever was supposed to be minding the animals had apparently fled at the army’s approach. He’s lucky Janus is so restrained, or we’d all be eating beefsteak.

Abby had slipped into the tent, quietly, as she had done every night since the confrontation at Antova. In what might have been an effort to delay the main business of the evening, Winter found herself recounting her conversation with Janus, and her impression that, somehow, he’d been lying to her.

“I don’t know,” Winter said. “Not telling the whole truth, anyway.”

“You don’t think he’s really doing it for the good of Vordan?”

Winter shook her head. “That may be part of it, but there’s something else. What he told me sounded . . . too pat. Like it was something he told himself, to try and get himself to believe it.”

“We’ve got no choice now but to trust him,” Abby said.

“No.” Winter let her awareness sink through the layers of her mind, down to the level where she could feel the slow movement of the Infernivore. “It’s been a long time since I had a choice.”

There was a long pause.

“Jane was wrong,” Abby said. “She was wrong, and she’s still wrong. You did the right thing.”

Winter sighed. “Thanks.” Then, steeling herself, she asked the question she’d asked every night. “Any sign of her?”