Adare hesitated, then pushed her way forward. She hadn’t risked the trip into town only to be cowed by her own kenarang. Csestriim or no, he still had Nira’s collar around his neck, a deadly, invisible noose. One word from Adare and the old woman would kill him. Not that Nira was there. Even spry as she was, she couldn’t have managed the forced march north. Adare tried to ignore the fact.

“General,” she said, stepping forward, taking il Tornja by the shoulder.

He turned his head.

“I said—”

The words withered in her mouth. She had locked gazes with her kenarang hundreds of times—over a shared pillow and a bared knife, in lust, love, and furious distrust—and she thought she understood the range of his emotion. She thought that she had fought past his lies and betrayals to finally understand something of the creature to whom she had tied her fate. Staring into his face, however, she realized for the first time the depth of her error.

Gone was the wry amusement she had seen so often, gone the wolfish hunger. All emotion had been scrubbed from those eyes, all expression Adare might have recognized as human . . . gone. His face was the face of a man, but for the first time she saw the mind behind in that unwavering stare: a mind cold and alien and unknowable as the dark space between midwinter stars. She wanted to shrink into her cloak, to turn away, to flee. For half a heartbeat, the terrifying drop from the tower seemed to offer escape rather than certain death.

“Stay,” he said, the word quick as a knife nicking a vein. “But do not speak. It is a near thing, this contest.”

“What—” she began, then faltered.

“I am what you kept alive to wage your wars. Now you will see why.”

Adare nodded numbly. She felt that if she looked into the emptiness of those eyes a heartbeat longer her mind might unhinge. Far below, blood ran heavy as spring snowmelt in the town’s crude gutters. The fight crashed up against the base of the tower. Men fought, and screamed, and died, but she no longer feared the battle. That, at least, was a fight between men, courage matched against courage, will against will. She was no warrior, but she could understand their hope, terror, and rage, emotions that seemed warm as summer rain, soft as a down bed when compared to the eyes of the creature beside her.

“One runner to the bridge,” il Tornja said. He didn’t turn to look at his messengers, nor did he raise a hand. “Tell them to abandon spears. Use swords.”

A man darted through the trapdoor without a word.