“That’s why I need you in Annur,” Kaden said. “So that when I return, I’ll have some idea what I’m up against. Time is crucial here.”

Valyn watched his brother. The first stars blazed in the eastern sky, but Kaden’s eyes burned brighter, the only true light in the great dark of the mountains. There was something in the way he sat, in the way he moved or didn’t move, something Valyn could apprehend only dimly. . . .

“That’s not the only reason,” Valyn said finally. “You want us in Annur, but that’s not all. There’s something else.”

Kaden shook his head ruefully. “I’m supposed to be the one who’s good at noticing things.”

“What is it?” Valyn pressed.

Kaden hesitated, then shrugged. “There are gates,” he said finally. “Kenta. I should be able to use them. It’s why I was sent here in the first place, but I need to test them. I need to know.”

“Gates?”

“A network of them, made by the Csestriim thousands of years ago and scattered across both continents.” He hesitated. “Maybe beyond both continents for all I know. You step through one kenta and emerge from a different one hundreds of miles distant. Thousands of miles. They were a Csestriim weapon, and now they are entrusted to us, to the Malkeenians, to keep and to guard.”

Valyn stared for a moment. “Slow down,” he said finally, trying to make sense of the claim, to comprehend the full scope of the implications. Ancient Csestriim gates, portals spanning continents—it sounded like insanity, but then, pretty much everything since leaving the Islands had seemed insane. “Go back and tell it from the start.”

Kaden remained silent a moment, gathering his thoughts, and then, as Valyn listened in disbelief, explained it all: the Blank God and the Csestriim leaches, the war against the humans and the founding of the empire, the vaniate—some strange trance that the Shin had somehow learned from the Csestriim, that Kaden himself had learned from the Shin—and the annihilation that threatened anyone who attempted to use the gates without achieving it. According to Kaden, Annur itself hinged on the network of kenta, hinged on the ability of the emperors to use them. The concept made tactical and strategic sense. The Kettral enjoyed a crushing advantage over their foes because the birds allowed them to move faster, to know more, to turn up suddenly where no one expected them to be. The gates, if they were real, would prove even more powerful. If they were real. If they actually worked.

“Have you seen one?” Valyn asked. “Have you seen anyone use one?”

Kaden shook his head. “But there’s a kenta near here in the mountains, one that leads to the Ishien. I asked Tan about it earlier.”

Valyn spread his hands. “Even if it’s real, even if it does what the monk claims, it could kill you.”