Kaden stopped walking. For a long time he didn’t move. There seemed no point. There were a thousand tasks ahead of him, none of which he understood.

“A relative,” he said finally.

Kiel nodded. “Your family is old. There are many branches. Intarra’s touch is strongest upon your own, but there are others.”

Kaden had never considered the notion before, but it made a certain sense. If Sanlitun had known, he might have given Adiv a high post in the government out of some kind of loyalty. And Adiv himself . . . how would he have felt after a lifetime hiding his eyes while the Malkeenians flaunted their own? Bitter enough to turn on an emperor who had favored him? Bitter enough to kill? Kaden shook his head. More questions and no answers.

“I should go to my father’s study,” he said. “Look over his papers before the council meets again. What do I have, a few hours?”

“What you should do,” Kiel said, “is sleep.”

Gabril nodded. “Work without rest and you will achieve nothing.”

The First Speaker and the Csestriim had not left his side since the Great Gate was thrown open and the council admitted to the deafening tolling of the gongs. Kaden was grateful for the support, more than grateful, but after hours of talking, negotiation, and reassurance, he longed for a few hours of silence, of solitude.

Gabril, as though sensing his thoughts, patted him on the shoulder. “Come. We will see you to your chambers, and I will command the watch at your door myself.” If the First Speaker was exhausted after the long night, he didn’t show it. But then, the First Speaker hadn’t spent the afternoon fighting for his life against Adiv, Matol, and the Ishien. Kaden started to accept, then shook his head.

“There’s Triste, too,” he said. “I have to see her.”

In the chaos following his emergence from the kenta, in his urgency to see the council installed before any opposition could coalesce, Kaden had allowed the girl to be led away, her eyes blank, baffled, and hopeless. The palace guards had wanted to kill her on the spot, but Kaden stopped them, insisting on her imprisonment instead. In truth, he had no idea what to think about her final bloody massacre, no idea how to feel about it. Certainly she had saved his life, both by holding up the tunnel as Adiv sought to tear it down, and by killing the soldiers under the leach’s command. It seemed, however, that something inside the girl had snapped, some cord tethering her mind to the world. He had walked among the bodies in the Jasmine Court, had looked at their faces. There were ministers among the number, and courtiers, one old woman, and at least three children. They couldn’t all have been a part of Adiv’s plot. They weren’t all supporters of Adare and il Tornja.