“And in this world,” Adare replied quietly, “there is no fire without fuel. No flame without ash.” She shook her head. “I am not a goddess, but I am a princess of Annur, and Annur is real. It is here. My hands are bloody, but unlike those of the goddess we both serve, I can do real work with them. I can hold a sword or a scepter. I can help people, real people right now, but not without the Sons.”

Lehav watched her awhile, then looked over at the candle. The soft wax had folded over his notch and the flame wavered in the cool draft.

“All right,” he said finally.

Adare let out a long, unsteady breath. “All right.”

He turned back to her. “I can save you, but your men, those Aedolians . . . they killed eleven of the Sons.”

“No,” Adare said, jarred from her tiny moment of relief. “They were only trying to help me. They were doing what they swore to do.”

Lehav laughed grimly. “We’ve all sworn to do something. They killed my men. If I am to have any credibility before my people . . . if we are to have any credibility, they have to burn.”

Adare felt as though a stone were blocking her throat.

“They are good men,” she managed finally.

“As you said,” Lehav replied slowly, “there is no flame without ash.”

19

I know a way out.

In the long undifferentiated darkness of his imprisonment, Kaden revolved the words in his mind, listening to them as though they were a faint strain of music in the silence, studying them as he might a glimmer of light in the endless shadow. Again and again he went back to the saama’an, the perfectly carved memory of those final moments in Triste’s cell when the Csestriim had met his eyes, then mouthed those five words.

I know a way out.

It was a baffling claim, horrible in the hope it offered, maddening because Kaden could make no sense of it. When the Ishien slammed shut the door of his cell, turned the key in the lock, Kaden had waited for a thousand heartbeats before standing, before exploring with fingers and palms the rough stone extent of his prison. His burning eyes offered a pathetic measure of light, enough to avoid walking into a wall if he moved slowly, and so he shuffled painstakingly around the tiny chamber. There was little to learn. The walls were damp. The wooden door felt heavy. In the corner, a small hole no larger than Kaden’s hand opened into unmeasured darkness below.