“I’ll tell you,” Laith grumbled, “I’m getting pretty sick of the fucking Aedolian Guard. If they’re not off in the ’Shael-spawned mountains trying to murder the Emperor, they’re swarming all over the two people on this continent that we need to get close to.” He turned to glare at Valyn, as though the whole thing were his fault. “When do they go away? Or do they wipe your ass every time you take a shit?”

Valyn was about to snap out a sharp retort when he paused. “No,” he replied after a moment, raising the long lens to his eye once more, “they don’t.”

“Don’t go away?”

“Don’t wipe your ass. At least, they didn’t when I was a kid. Back in the Dawn Palace they would station themselves outside the privy chamber. They never came in.”

Talal pursed his lips. “I see where you’re headed with this, but we’re not in the Dawn Palace. Whatever latrine Adare uses will be ringed with Aedolians, same as her tent. You’ll have as much trouble getting into one as the other.”

“The difference is,” Valyn said, pointing to the soldiers below who had begun digging a hole a dozen paces from Adare’s tent, “that I’m not going to have to get inside. I’m going to start inside.”

By the time Valyn had threaded his way past the outer sentries, picketed his horse with the other animals, then talked his way through the inner guard, he was sweating, despite the cool night breeze. Fortunately, just about everyone in the camp looked half dead on their feet—they were resting now, but evidently il Tornja had been pushing them even harder than Valyn realized—and the guardsmen waved him through with little more than a glance at his Annurian armor and a few cursory questions. It seemed a crude sort of vigilance, but effective enough in its rough way. Even after being waved through, Valyn had to remind himself to walk slowly, to emulate the weary plodding of the other legionaries, to look at the muddied ground before him instead of glancing over his shoulder.

They’re exhausted, he reminded himself, and you’re just one more soldier among thousands. And it’s night.

He offered up a small prayer of thanks to Hull for the darkness. Though he could see quite clearly, the night hid his face and his eyes from the Annurians. Now that he was past the picket, no one was likely to challenge him unless he approached the Aedolians around Adare’s pavilion. By the time he reached her tent, he had grown almost accustomed to his near-invisibility, and paused for a moment outside the pools of light cast by the torches to size up her guard.