“I am interested,” he said, keeping his voice level, his anger in check, “in understanding why you are here. In knowing who hired a Skullsworn to guard an Annurian emperor.”

She watched him carefully, almost eagerly, as though she were hoping he might reach for his blades, then shrugged and put her head back against the rock, closing her eyes.

“You haven’t guessed?” she asked.

Valyn had plenty of guesses, but none of them made much sense. The Skullsworn were assassins, not saviors.

“My father,” Kaden said quietly. “Sanlitun hired you.”

Pyrre pointed at him without opening her eyes.

“He’s not quite as hopeless as he looks, this new Emperor of yours.”

Valyn glanced over at Kaden. “Why would Father send Skullsworn?”

“Maybe because the ’Kent-kissing Aedolian Guard turned out to be filled with traitors and idiots,” Gwenna observed. “The men he sent to warn you got themselves killed, and the ones who came for Kaden came to kill him.”

“It makes sense,” Kaden said. “A strange sort of sense. He didn’t know who was a part of the conspiracy, and so he tried to protect each of us in a different way. He sent his most trusted Aedolians after you, but one of them must have let the plan leak. For me, he decided to send people who weren’t involved with imperial politics at all.”

Valyn blew out a long, slow breath. It did make sense. It also spoke to Sanlitun’s level of desperation. The Skullsworn, after all, had been hired in the past to murder Annurian emperors.

He shook his head. “Well, it’s a good fucking thing whoever we’re fighting against didn’t hire their own batch of Skullsworn.”

Pyrre chuckled. “They did. Who do you think killed the boatload of Aedolians dispatched to warn Valyn?”

Valyn stared. “You bastards are fighting on both sides of this thing?”

“Kill her,” Gwenna said. “Let’s just kill her and be done with it.”

The assassin didn’t even open her eyes at the threat. “I like meeting a young woman with a decisive cast of mind,” she said. “I’d prefer not to offer you to the god just because you’re feeling rash. And yes, we are, as you point out, on both sides, but only because to a worshipper of Ananshael, these sides don’t matter. There are the living, and the dead. If a contract involves killing, and there is enough gold involved, we will take the contract, the keeping of which is an act of holy devotion. I am obliged to see Kaden to Annur, even if it means opening the throats of other priests and priestesses in the process.”

“In that case,” Kaden said, “my plan is the best for you, too. I get back to Annur faster, which means your work is over sooner.”

Pyrre waved an admonitory finger at him. “In theory.”

“The assassin is irrelevant,” Tan cut in.