“What language is it?” Valyn asked.

Triste hesitated, then shook her head.

“It is Csestriim,” Tan said finally. “More specifically, a dialect of the Csestriim speech used by the early humans.”

Valyn raised an eyebrow. “The priestesses of Ciena learn Csestriim?”

Triste bit her lip. “I’m not . . . I suppose I did. There were a lot of languages. The men . . . they come from all over. All over the world.”

“You mean you studied up in case you were called upon to pleasure a Csestriim?” Pyrre asked. “I’m impressed.”

“I wasn’t a leina,” Triste replied. “I wasn’t initiated. . . .” She trailed off, still staring at the words as though they were vipers.

“All right then,” Valyn said finally, “the language lesson has been fun.” He glanced over the broad swath of stone, and the hair on his arms rose.

Across the ledge, a hundred paces from where he stood, inside the black yawning doorway through which they had first emerged from the cliff: a flicker of motion. No light, no noise, just a silent shape sliding across the darkness, gone so fast he couldn’t even be certain it was real. It could have been anything, a leaf caught in the night breeze, a fragment of cloth flapping. But there is no cloth here, he reminded himself. Gwenna and Annick had said as much. Only the hard things. Only the bones.

There were animals in the Bone Mountains, crag cats, bears, plenty of smaller, less dangerous creatures. Something might have found a convenient lair inside the cliff. Something might have followed them in. In either case, they were vulnerable standing in the entrance to the orphanage, silhouetted by the light of their lantern. Jumping at shadows was a good way to make mistakes, but so was standing around out in the open.

“Upstairs,” he said. “Laith and Gwenna, check the first floors. Talal, Annick, those above. Gwenna, rig the whole place.”

He glanced over his shoulder once more, to where he’d seen the motion. Nothing. The night was still, silent. Valyn turned back to the group. “Now.”

5

A dare spent the better part of the morning hunched beneath a bridge, pressed up against the stone pilings, teeth chattering in the brisk spring breeze, limbs trembling beneath her sodden wool robe, hair damp and cold on her nape, despite having wrung it out a dozen times over. She would have dried more quickly in the sun, but she couldn’t leave the shadows until she was dry. A drenched woman wandering the streets would draw attention, and when Fulton and Birch came looking, she didn’t want anyone to remember her passage.