He set the question aside, focusing on the assassin. Smell wasn’t quite the right word. He could smell more acutely, to be sure—the woman’s sweat, her hair, even from two paces distant—but this vague sensation hovering at the edge of thought wasn’t that. Or it was that, but more. Sometimes he thought he was losing his mind, imagining new senses for himself, but the sensation remained: he could smell emotion now: anger, and hunger, and fear in all its infinite variation. There was the raw musk of terror and pinched hint of frayed nerves. Everyone in their battered group shared the fear, at least to some extent. Everyone but Rampuri Tan and the Skullsworn.

According to Kaden, Pyrre had come to Ashk’lan because she was paid to make the trip, to save his life, and she had rescued Kaden several times over. Despite an inclination to provoke Tan and the Kettral, she made a formidable ally. Still, how far could you trust a woman whose sole allegiance was to the Lord of the Grave? How far could you trust a woman who seemed, from both her smell and demeanor, utterly indifferent to death?

“I have a plan,” Kaden replied, glancing from Pyrre to Tan to Valyn.

Valyn stifled a groan.

The night before, after tethering the bird, walking the perimeter three times, and double-checking, to Gwenna’s great irritation, the flickwicks and moles she had hidden to guard both approaches to the pass, Valyn had climbed to the top of a large boulder, a jagged shard of rock set apart from the rest of the group. Partly he wanted the high ground, a spot with a clear view of everything below, and partly he wanted to be alone, to try to make sense of the events of the last few days, of his own role in the brutal fighting that had taken place. Kaden found him there just as night’s bleak stain leaked over the eastern peaks.

“Don’t get up,” Kaden said as he climbed the side of the rock. “If you start bowing now, I’ll throw you off the mountain.” His voice was quiet, ragged.

Valyn glanced over, hesitated, then nodded, returning his attention to the naked sword across his knees. His fight with Sami Yurl had left a tiny nick in the smoke steel halfway down the blade. He’d been at it with his stone for the better part of an hour, smoothing it out stroke by careful stroke.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing with the stone, “Your Rad—”

“Not that either,” Kaden groaned, perching cross-legged at the very lip of the boulder. “Save it for when someone else is listening.”

“You are the Emperor,” Valyn pointed out.