“What happened to my tower?” he breathed, gouging at the dirt between the stones. His voice rose, “Who wrecked my tower?”

Adare considered the foundation. It may have once supported a slender tower, but farmers had long ago carted off the stone for their own walls and houses. How Oshi found it in the first place she had no idea, or how he had clambered down the uneven walls without hurting himself.

“Who destroyed my tower?” he demanded once more, louder this time, rocking more violently. “Shihjahin? Dirik? Who?”

Adare took a step back.

The man was mad. Ranting. Shihjahin and Dirik were two of the Atmani, both a millennium and more in the ground. Oshi must have been paying close attention to the ancient structures fronting the canal, absorbing the long arguments between the pilgrims over the leach-lords who had built them. He’d come untethered from reality, from his own time, drifting back centuries upon centuries to an era of war and horror.

He had stopped rocking, stopped moving entirely. He sat straight up, still as a statue.

“Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly.

His eyes shifted to her, picked her over, then shifted away. Adare was about to step closer, to wrap an arm around his shoulders as she’d seen Nira do so many times, when he slapped his hands together, an imperious gesture, part summons, part warning, then spread his palms slowly. Adare realized to her horror that the air between them had caught fire, the squirming blaze a dozen times brighter than the meager light of her lantern. An icy sliver of fear pricked the back of her neck.

A leach. Nira’s brother was a leach, and one descended partway into madness.

“Did Dirik send you?” he asked, voice gelid.

He flexed his fingers as he spoke, and the fire coalesced into a bright, burning web, malevolent red filaments pulsing. A leach. There was a whole ministry in the Dawn Palace—Purification—given over to the rooting out and hunting down of leaches, and each year dozens of young ministers were killed confronting their quarry. Adare’s stomach squirmed inside her like a fish. She had faced down Uinian, but that was with il Tornja by her side and a trained assassin backing her play, all in the full light of day.

This . . . this was something else.

“Oshi,” she began, trying to speak slowly, quietly, the way she’d heard the kennel masters talk to their wounded dogs. “Oshi, it’s just me. Dorellin.”

He frowned, flicked a finger, and a small web of flame broke off from the great ball spinning slowly between his hands.