He took a long, slow breath, turning his focus from the hallway to his own mind. Fear clung there, spiked and recalcitrant as a mountain burr lodged in the cloth of a new robe, though whether that fear was for Matol and Ishien, who could come looking for him at any moment, or for the man beyond the door, Kaden couldn’t say. He worked at the emotion, prying it looser and looser with each breath. He needed clarity when he heard what the prisoner had to say. He needed calm.

Here is the floor, he told himself, feeling the rough stone, cold and slick beneath his bare soles.

Here is the light from my eyes.

The future held perils, but he did not live in the future.

Here is the latch, he said, moving the metal catch to open the small, barred window set into the steel door. Here is the window into the darkness.

Through the narrow open slot, he heard the rustle of cloth against cloth, then a wet, unhealthy cough, the noise growing closer as the prisoner approached.

“Another visit?”

Kaden heard the voice first, the same spare articulation he remembered from his encounter with Kiel days earlier. Then the man’s begrimed face appeared in the narrow slot, squinting as his eyes moved from utter darkness to the meager light of Kaden’s own eyes. Kiel glanced at him, then past, into the hallway beyond.

“Where are Rampuri and Ekhard?”

Kaden shook his head. “I am alone.”

“Good,” Kiel murmured after a moment. “You understood. You trusted me.”

“No,” Kaden cut in. “I do not trust you.”

Kiel paused. “And yet you are here. . . .”

“Because I was taught to look before judging. To listen.”

The prisoner made a sound that Kaden recognized, after a moment, as a chuckle. “I’m glad to learn that the Shin are still so rigorous. And Scial Nin? Is he still the abbot?”

“Scial Nin . . .” Kaden began, then paused. The fact that Kaden needed him, that they shared the same foe, didn’t make the Csestriim any less dangerous. Kaden needed answers to his questions, not to spend time spinning yarns about a life long left behind.

“You know a way out?” Kaden asked.

Kiel nodded.

“How? Where?”

The Csestriim shook his head slowly. “Opening this door would be a generous gesture.”

“I’m not here to be generous,” Kaden said.

“Then perhaps you should not be here at all,” the man said. “The Malkeenians I knew understood the value of generosity. Of trust. Of mutual support.”

Kaden stared, dazed. “What Malkeenians?” He forced his heart to keep the same steady time, his lungs to rise and fall in deep, measured breaths.

“Your father, for one.”

Kaden shook his head. “Tan told me you would lie.”

Kiel raised an eyebrow. “As with all zealots, Rampuri Tan’s zeal distorts his vision of the world. I have given him no reason to distrust me.”