Fear filled her wide eyes, but she didn’t hesitate. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Morjeta protested. “Please.”

Triste peeled away her mother’s arms. “I’m going.”

“What about the nobles?” Gabril asked. “They assembled once out of curiosity. They’ll be reluctant to do so again.”

Kaden nodded. “Explain to them that I plan to make my earlier offer more compelling. Also, make sure they dress discreetly. In fact, tell them to dress as monks.”

“Monks?” Gabril asked. “Trust does not flow readily between them. As at our last meeting, they will not feel safe without steel in their hands.”

Kaden nodded. “You’d be surprised what you can hide beneath a monk’s robe. They can bring whatever weapons they want as long as they keep them hidden.” He paused. “Can you write me a list of all the names?”

Gabril raised his eyebrows. “We’ve been over them already.”

“I know. I want a chance to study them, to learn them by heart,” Kaden replied. “This meeting is going to be difficult enough. I don’t want to offend anyone by botching a name.”

Gabril shrugged, then turned to Morjeta. “You have ink and brushes.”

For a moment the woman seemed not to hear him, staring instead at Kaden as though seeing him for the first time. Then, just as Gabril seemed about to repeat himself, she nodded abruptly and left the room, returning moments later with an elaborate lacquered case, opening it on the table between them.

“Please,” she said, gesturing to the inks and sheets of fine vellum. “Use whatever you need.”

Gabril took one brush while Kaden selected another.

“While you’re writing the names,” he said, “I’ll write a short note to each of our . . . friends explaining how to get into the chapterhouse unseen. If I seal them up, can you make sure they are delivered?”

Gabril nodded without glancing up from his writing. “It is simple enough.”

“Thank you,” Kaden said.

As he worked, he was careful to make sure no one in the room could see what he wrote. He thought he had finally discovered whom to trust, but he couldn’t be certain, and it would not do for the wrong eyes to see that his notes to the nobility said nothing about meeting in the chapterhouse, that his letter to Iaapa had nothing to do with a return to Ashk’lan.

44

Valyn felt as though he’d been watching Balendin tear people apart for days, the shock of the violence matched only by the shock of seeing the leach free, striding up and down the far bank of the Black, the Urghul genuflecting before him as though he were a nomadic chieftain in his own right. Were it not for his fingers—still wrapped in bloody bandages—and his dark hair, dark skin, Valyn might have mistaken him for one of the horsemen.