Water buffalo cropped the early summer grass, ducks scrabbled for scraps in the dusty roads, two cranes balanced in the shallows of a trash-choked canal, beaks darting for fish, but there were no people. There should have been wagons on the roads and farmers in the surrounding fields, the chatter and hum of men and women going about their lives. Instead, there was stillness, silence, a hot sun stuck in the sky as though nailed there. The citizens of these outlying quarters of Annur were gone, or hiding, neither of which did anything to alleviate Adare’s fear.

No army had met them on the long march north. At first, Adare had felt relieved by that, then surprised, then worried. Lehav had set a brutal pace, and the Sons had outdistanced all the wagons on the road. Still, dozens of canal boats had slipped past them, gliding effortlessly on the current, all packed with deckhands gaping at the army, all headed for Annur. For all their haste, there was no way they had stolen a march on il Tornja, and their approach—a straight shot up the canal road—left him with a number of ways to respond.

Each day, Adare expected her own scouts to return with news of an Annurian army camped athwart the road. Mostly, she had dreaded the word, but at least a battle on the road might take place well clear of the city. The armies would churn the fields to mud, ruining the season’s crop, but if a crop was all that came to ruin as a result of her revolution, Adare would count herself lucky. The fact that the kenarang had not already opposed them terrified her. If he chose to make his stand in the cramped streets of the capital itself, houses would burn, shops and businesses. Men and women, Annurians, would die.

What’s your plan, you bastard? she wondered, standing in her stirrups, trying to peer into the shadowed gaps between the buildings. What’s your angle?

“Looks like he’s aiming to meet us at the walls,” Lehav said, squinting through his long lens. “Good.”

Adare stared. “Good?”

He nodded. “The old walls are at least ten blocks back, packed between houses and shops. We’ll see what the scouts have to say about the fortification of the streets, but city fighting should give us the advantage. The legions train to fight on open ground, but the Sons have been drilling street warfare since before Uinian’s death.”

“To fight us,” Adare said, studying him. “To fight the throne.”

“This fight’s been a long time coming,” he said, meeting her gaze.