The road north had given Adare plenty of occasions to doubt whether elevating the old woman to Mizran Councillor had been the wisest decision. On the one hand, Nira had ruled an empire of her own for centuries, which gave her hundreds of years more experience ruling an empire than anyone else Adare knew. On the other, that empire had ended in a morass of war, grief, and ruin. So, maybe not such a good model after all.

It had been nine days since Annur, nine days of forced march through terrain that had shifted from open farmland, to low hills, to thick pine forests, dotted with bogs and streams. Without the imperial road—a mind-boggling feat of engineering comprised of stone bridges, wide flagstones, and ditches on either side to channel away the runoff—the army would have been helplessly mired days earlier, as soon as they entered the Thousand Lakes. As it was, the Sons could travel only so fast on a road built more for commerce than military transport. Adare found herself simultaneously exhausted by their pace and chafing at the lack of progress, worried about what might be transpiring ahead of her in the darkness of the primeval forest, and behind, in the capital she had so hastily abandoned. In fact, the farther she marched from Annur, the more she doubted her decision. Facing il Tornja and meeting the Urghul threat—if there even was an Urghul threat—had seemed crucial back in the capital, but what had she sacrificed in order to march north? What opportunities had she destroyed?

“If I’m going to sit the Unhewn Throne,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “there are forms to be observed, rituals. And I can’t observe them here, stuck in the middle of a ’Kent-kissing forest.”

Nira blew out her cheeks. “Sometimes, girl, I’d swear you were denser than my brick-headed brother.” She waved a hand at Oshi, who was staring at the palms of his hands as though they were intricate maps, oblivious to the movement of his horse beneath him. “You get a throne by taking it, not by asking for it.”

“I can’t just take it,” Adare protested. “Allegedly, I have il Tornja’s support, and that means I’ve got the army, too, but leaving aside the fact that the bastard murdered my father, that I intend to see him executed the moment we catch up with him, it is the historical precedent that makes a person Emperor.”