Adare clenched her hands around the reins of her horse. Her old general had murdered her father, her new general had been scheming for years to fight her empire, and her only councillor was a half-crazed leach. The fact that she was still alive seemed nothing short of miraculous, and the odds of remaining so loomed longer by the moment.

“If we go to the streets,” she said, “people will die. I’ve read about siege warfare. Houses will burn. Businesses. Whole quarters of the city could be destroyed.”

Lehav fixed her with a hard stare. “You came here to start a war. Or did you forget?”

Before Adare could respond, two riders cantered out of the city, hooves of their horses raising a nervous tattoo on the earth. Lehav raised the long lens again, watched for a moment, then grunted. “Ours.”

The men reined up before them, bowing in their saddles to Adare, then turning to Lehav.

“Defenses?” he asked.

The older of the two—a short man with a lopsided mouth and ears that looked nailed to the side of his broad head—frowned, then jerked a thumb back over his shoulder.

“Nothin’, Commander. No folks in the streets, but no soldiers either.”

Lehav frowned, then glanced over at the other scout. “And you?”

“Same. No army. No sign of an army. There’s no one at all on these streets here, but you get five or six blocks in and it’s packed with folks, same as any other day, like they don’t even know that we’re here.”

“An ambush,” Fulton said. The guardsman had remained still as stone throughout the conversation, mounted on his own gray gelding just behind Adare’s left shoulder, but he nudged the beast forward now. “Ran il Tornja will have his men inside the shops and houses. Once you commit your force to the streets, they’ll close in behind you, cut your own army into pieces. Take you apart one block at a time.”

Lehav nodded. If he was irritated by the Aedolian’s comment, he didn’t show it. “They can’t block every street,” he said. “We’ll march west, come in through the Stranger’s Gate—”

Fulton raised a hand, cutting him off, then pointed past them all, toward the city. “You may be spared the march.”

Adare pivoted in her saddle to find another knot of riders emerging from the buildings, maybe a dozen men on horses gleaming with silk and bronze. Unlike the scouts, the new party rode at a stately walk, pennons snapping at the breeze above, pennons stitched with the rising sun of Annur.

“Who is it?” Adare asked.

Lehav trained the long lens on the group. “Palace guards, squared up in a standard protective knot.”

“Who are they protecting?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know him. He has long hair and . . .” He paused, squinting. “Looks like a blindfold over his eyes.”