Adiv nodded his support. “The kenarang said you would understand the urgency, that you would make the wise decision. He has instructed me to aid you in any way I can, to support you in every particular.” He spread his hands. “You need only speak.”

For a long time, Adare said nothing. She studied the note in her hands, then the hands themselves. They should be trembling, she thought. She felt as though her whole body were trembling, caught in the grip of loss, and grief, and anger. Her hands, however, were still. She might have been testing a bolt of fine silk between her fingers rather than holding a message from the man who had murdered her father. She had come to Annur to start a war, only to be welcomed into her own palace. She had come home, returned to her place, but it was not hers, not fully, not yet.

“You have heard,” Adare said, raising her eyes to the Mizran Councillor, “of the events at the Everburning Well?”

Adiv nodded slowly. “I hear, in the murmurs from the south, the same word again and again: prophet. Would that I had eyes to see Intarra’s markings on your flesh.”

Adare ran an absent finger along the burns on her wrist, tracing the ramifying swirls.

“You will repeat the murmurs,” she said. “You will confirm them, here in the capital.”

The man hesitated, then nodded. “Of course, my lady. Of course. Intarra has ever smiled upon your family, and if anyone deserves this title, it is you—”

“That is not all,” Adare said, cutting him short.

Adiv paused, pursing his lips.

Now, Adare thought. The burns on her skin flamed, as though traced with a glowing knife. She could hear her heart in her ears, and wondered in brief amazement that the others couldn’t hear it, too. It has to be now.

“I will march north,” she said, “and I will do what needs to be done, with the Urghul and il Tornja both. I will do this because there is no one else to see it through. My father is murdered, Kaden is murdered, and though Valyn may survive somewhere, I have the eyes. I will sit the Unhewn Throne. I will see Intarra’s justice done.”

27

Collateral.

Even back on the Islands, Gwenna had hated the word. For one thing, the two meanings were always getting tangled up. She’d eavesdrop on veteran Wings in the mess hall just after they touched down, and collateral seemed to come up a lot. Trouble was, you couldn’t always tell whether they were talking about collateral as in hostage, or collateral as in some poor, miserable idiot who had nothing to do with anything and ended up dead anyway.