Fully half the town’s houses were burning, bright and indifferent flame shimmering the air. A two-story log structure groaned as fire lapped the beams, then collapsed into the street, crushing a score of legionaries. Down by the river, the press forced soldiers into the turgid current where they flailed for a desperate moment before their armor dragged them under. Two streets over, a pair of Annurians hacked at the legs of a rearing horse while the rider plunged his spear downward over and over. The full fury of the struggle had not yet engulfed the tower, but men fought and died just a hundred paces distant.

This is battle, Adare told herself angrily. Look at it.

It didn’t look like battle. It looked like mutual slaughter. She wanted to vomit.

“Your Radiance,” Fulton said, extending an armored arm. “Please keep back from the edge. This is a dangerous place.”

“I am not going to fall off the tower,” she told him, trying to keep her voice firm, confident, turning her attention from the dead and dying to her immediate surroundings. Il Tornja sat at the very edge of the stone floor, just a few paces away. He had left all his guards below, but a dozen young men, battle messengers judging from their light armor, stood at attention, eyes moving nervously from il Tornja to the battle, then back. As Adare watched, two more runners burst up through the trapdoor, sweat streaming down their faces, chests heaving as they took their places at the end of the line. Blood dripped from the hand of the closest man, his blood or someone else’s. Adare couldn’t tell.

The kenarang himself might have been carved from stone. Unlike the famous generals whose paintings hung in halls of the Dawn Palace—men standing high in their stirrups or brandishing a sword from a rocky escarpment—il Tornja sat on the stone floor with his legs crossed beneath him, hands in his lap. He wore a sword buckled at his belt, but it remained sheathed. Adare couldn’t see his face, but there was something about the man’s absolute stillness that made her pause.

No, she reminded herself. Not a man. A Csestriim.

“The battle?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “Is it going as planned?”

Il Tornja didn’t turn, didn’t speak. The wind shifted his hair, tugged at the collar of his cloak, but the general himself remained motionless. Adare glanced at the line of runners and signalmen. The nearest, a black-haired, wide-eyed youth, met her gaze, shook his head slightly, then pursed his lips. It took her a moment to realize he was mouthing the word “No.” He looked almost as frightened of il Tornja as he did of the battle below.