Triste stared about her, hand clasped over her nose and mouth to keep out the smell or to stop herself from retching. Since learning of her mother’s betrayal, she hadn’t said two words together. Kaden had wanted her to remain behind, to go with Gabril, but when he said that he intended to look for Adiv’s body in the wreckage, she had insisted on coming, face hard as stone.

“He’s my father,” she’d said, “and if he’s dead I want to see it with my own eyes.”

The chances were slim. Kaden hadn’t seen a quarter of the faces of the imperial soldiers, but it seemed unlikely that Adiv had involved himself in the attack. In fact, Kaden had insisted on waiting until dusk in case the councillor were secreted somewhere else in the square, watching the smoldering chapterhouse from his own hidden vantage. Certainly, as they explored the rooms, he saw no sign of Adiv. No sign, either, of Ekhard Matol.

The absence of both men worried Kaden, and as they pressed deeper into the chapterhouse, he felt the muscles of his chest grow tighter.

“Matol is a shrewd, dangerous fighter,” Kiel said, as though hearing his thoughts. “It’s possible he escaped.”

“If Matol is still alive,” Kaden replied, “then this whole thing failed.”

“It brought the nobles over to your side,” the Csestriim pointed out.

“That was only one part of the plan. I had hoped that Adiv and the Ishien would destroy each other. If they have not, if Matol is still alive, I have a problem. They will make a bid for control of the kenta, denying me the gates.”

“It’s possible he used the kenta here to escape,” Kiel said. “It is part of the imperial rather than the Ishien network, but he knows of it.”

Kaden nodded grimly. He’d already considered the possibility that the Ishien might escape through the gate—it was a flaw with the plan—but he’d hoped that their desire to capture him combined with the shock of Adiv’s arrival would have stunned them long enough to break off any possibility of an orderly retreat. He had hoped that Matol himself would have been leading the ambush. More evidence of an old Shin truth: Hope is a straight road to suffering.

“Where is the kenta?” he asked.

Kiel crooked a finger at the floor. “Down.”

Kaden hesitated. “Someone could be waiting there. They could have doubled back.”

Triste, however, shoved past him. “I’m going,” she said. “I need to see.” And before he could reach her, she was running down the stairs.