Kaden didn’t point out that when it was over, he might not have the ability to go anywhere.

When he stepped through the graceful arch of the palace walls, however, and pushed back his hood to show his eyes, when he stated his name and asked to see the First Speaker of Rabi, the white-robed guard just raised his brows, then nodded, escorting him into a wide interior courtyard. Flowering vines perfumed the breeze, and a large fountain tossed a spray of water ten feet into the air. It was a simple, graciously proportioned space, ideal for the lazy sipping of chilled ta on a warm summer day. There was, however, nothing lazy about the fight unfolding on the wide flagstones.

Three soldiers with long spears were attacking a man, if the figure engulfed in the black robe was a man, pressing him from different angles, probing with their weapons, testing his defenses. At the sight of Kaden, the sparring stopped, and the servant who had ushered him in crossed to the robed figure, murmuring something to him. The robe turned—Kaden couldn’t see the man’s face inside the voluminous hood—considered him a moment, then a hand emerged from the dark folds, flicking the servant away.

So, Kaden thought, schooling himself to stillness, Gabril the Red enjoys making people wait. He filed the thought away as the fight resumed.

The soldiers with the spears immediately redoubled their attacks, weapons slashing and plunging into the robe at their center. Of the man inside the cloth, there was no sign. His hands, his legs, even his head were lost in the swirl of fabric. A shadowrobe, Kaden realized. Holy Hull, he’s a shadowrobe.

He’d grown up on stories of the desert warriors, enjoying them almost as much as tales of the Kettral. Many people considered the desert warriors to be leaches, but Kaden and Valyn had found an old codex in the palace library once, the pages filled with illustrations and diagrams, showing just how a skilled shadowrobe could use the huge, flapping cloak to hide his movements, to disguise the location of his body.

Kaden and Valyn had spent days using old blankets as robes, trying to perfect the techniques, to mimic hips with their hands, to make elbows look like shoulders, to twist their bodies so that what seemed from the outside to be the center of mass was nothing more than empty air. According to the book, men and women sometimes went mad fighting shadowrobes. Kaden never believed that; for all Valyn’s efforts, it was always easy to tell his hands from his head, to see his skinny ankles darting about beneath the cloth. Watching Gabril, however . . . Kaden shook his head. Fighting a shadowrobe looked like trying to attack the wind.