Despite the long years, he recognized his sister at a glance. Even without Intarra’s eyes, he would have known her. She was older, of course, a woman instead of a girl, but she had the same lean build, the same angularity to her features, the same honey-pale skin—shades lighter than either Valyn’s or Kaden’s, except . . . He squinted through the lens. It was hard to be certain at the distance, but it looked as though a delicate tattoo ran down one side of her face, a few graceful lines that seemed to glow in the sunlight, starting beneath her hair and swirling down her neck into her robes.

He shifted the lens to consider those robes more fully. His sister finally seemed to have shed the dresses she spent her childhood cursing. The golden cloth of her clothing was rich enough for any princess’s gown, but cut in the austere style of an imperial minister, trimmed at the collars and shoulders with black. The shifting fashions of the Dawn Palace, the subtle social signaling of wardrobe, had never much interested Valyn, but Adare’s clothes spoke of authority, even command. That, and the armed men escorting her.

“What in Ananshael’s sweet name,” he muttered, lowering the long lens, “is Adare doing with an army on the march?”

“Does it matter?” Laith asked. “This is what we wanted, right? She can tell us what’s going on. Forget the old plan. We go to her first, see if Long Fist’s been selling us shit and calling it fruit. Then, if it still comes to taking down the regent, it might help to have a little royalty on our side.”

“Valyn is royalty as well,” Talal pointed out.

Laith snorted. “Valyn’s a traitor, same as the two of us.”

Watching Adare from the tree line through a long lens was one thing; getting close enough to her to talk quite another. A young soldier on horseback met Valyn’s sister on the road, bowed, face pressed against the pommel of his saddle, straightened up when she waved a hand, talked with her a moment, then bowed again before leading her forward.

Valyn glanced over at the other riders. Just behind his sister rode two soldiers, one, a young warrior with a bronze helm and a stern face that might have been chipped from marble, the other a grizzled Aedolian, hand on the pommel of his broadblade, eyes scanning the surrounding terrain. At Adare’s side rode an old woman and an even older man, both gray-haired and stooped in the shoulders. Valyn didn’t recognize any of them, but they were making straight for the tents of the army encampment.

“Bunking with the troops,” Talal observed. “Good for morale.”

“Not exactly ‘with the troops,’ ” Laith noted after a pause.