Adare shook her head. “To fix it. To make it right.”

“To make it right,” Lehav said, looking past Adare to the map on the wall. He frowned, as though the layout of the streets and alleyways displeased him. “It doesn’t make sense. You could retract the Accords from the Dawn Palace. Retract or amend them. You didn’t need to come here to meet with me. You certainly didn’t need to walk all this way with a blindfold over your eyes.” He turned back to her, fixing her with a hard stare. “You are still lying, and each lie brings you closer to your death.”

The words were mild, but then, Adare had never heard the soldier raise his voice. She was reminded of his warning to the canal rats back in the muddy ruts of the Perfumed Quarter, the way he didn’t threaten so much as offer alternatives. He’d been willing to leave her then, willing, before learning she shared his faith, to let her be raped and killed without even knowing who she was. How much more readily would he let her go to the fires now?

“I am not lying,” she said slowly, “but there is more.”

He watched her for a moment, then, in a fluid motion, drew his belt knife. The blade gleamed in the fickle lights of candle and lantern, and for a moment he considered the steel, turning it back and forth, watching the flame and shadow play over it.

Adare stared, still as a cobra in the grip of the wooden flute’s soft song. He’s not going to burn me, she realized. He’s not going to wait that long. She imagined the wide map with her blood splattered across it.

Lehav, however, just gestured with the point of his knife toward a thick candle on the edge of the table, then flicked his wrist, scoring a line in the wax a finger’s width from the top.

“You have until that line to talk,” he said, “and then we are finished.”

Adare tried to collect her thoughts. There wasn’t much wax remaining above the notch, and the case she had to put before the soldier was a complex one. There would be no second chances and there could be no missteps.

“Ran il Tornja murdered my father.”

Lehav’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak. Adare glanced at the candle, then plunged ahead.

“The kenarang is at the center of a conspiracy to remove the Malkeenian line from power.”

“I serve Intarra,” Lehav said, “not the Malkeenian line.”

“You might want to rethink that position. My family is not il Tornja’s only target. We might not even be his main one. He wants your Church gone, destroyed, scrubbed from the face of the empire.”

“Why would the kenarang concern himself with domestic matters of religious freedom?”