For a moment he stared around in perplexity, searching for the kenta. He had formed an image in his head of something massive, grand, like the Godsgate of the Dawn Palace—marble, maybe, or polished bloodstone, or onyx—but nothing massive or magnificent waited in the middle of the room. He squinted in the meager lamplight. Nothing at all stood in the middle of the room.

“Talal,” Valyn said, gesturing curtly, “center window. I want eyes on the ledge before full dark. Gwenna, see what you can do about rigging a chunk of this floor to drop out.”

“I could kick a hole in the ’Kent-kissing floor,” the woman replied, digging at the crumbling mortar with her boot, “and you want me to rig it? I seem to remember someone back at the Eyrie teaching us something about not sleeping on top of our own explosives.”

Valyn turned to face his demolitions master. His jaw was tight, but his voice level when he responded. “And I remember something about having two ways out of any defensive position. You rigged the stairs, which keeps the bad guys out, which is good. It also keeps us in, which is less good.”

“If they can’t get in, why do we need to get out?”

“Gwenna,” Valyn said, pointing at the floor, “just do it. If you blow us all up, I’ll make sure I don’t die until you have a chance to punch me.”

“Yes, Oh Light of the Empire,” she said, bowing to Valyn as she yanked the charges out of her pack. “At once, My Noble Leader.” The words were sharp, but Kaden noticed some of the acid had gone out of her challenge. The whole thing sounded like sparring now, rather than actual fighting.

Valyn shook his head. “You can’t pull that shit anymore, Gwenna,” he said, jerking a thumb at Kaden. “He’s the Light of the Empire. We’re just here to make sure no one puts him out. Speaking of which,” he went on, turning to Tan and spreading his hands, “where’s the gate?”

Tan gestured toward the wall. Kaden squinted, then took a few steps closer. The kenta was there, he realized, almost as tall as the ceiling, but built, if built was the right word, flush with the masonry behind it. The arch was surprisingly slender, no more than a hand’s width in diameter, and made of something Kaden had never seen, a smooth gray substance that might have been part steel, part stone. The graceful span looked spun rather than carved, and the light came off of it strangely, as though it were illuminated, not by Valyn’s lantern, but some other, invisible source.

“What is the point,” Valyn asked, “of building a gate right into a wall?”

“The other side is not the wall,” Tan replied. “It is not here.”