‘Ah, Vedren. I was, I’m afraid, listening in. How is the little one taking the news?’

‘As well as you’d expect. I think she’ll be with us a while longer, if only because she has nowhere else to go.’

He nodded. ‘I can sympathize. Vedren, I’d like to ask you something.’

‘Anything, Tarf. I’m still your sworn, after all. Can’t exactly refuse.’ He offered a smile to blunt the statement, but it made it no less true.

‘Quite so, quite so. From now on, I’d like you to stay at my side. Not leave me alone with, well, the others, or anyone else.’

‘But—’

‘What if …’ He tailed off, swallowed, lowered his voice. ‘What if they decide they don’t want to support me any more? I have no hold over them, they’ve sworn no oath.’

‘You have nothing to fear from them, Tarf, really.’ As he said the words, Chel wondered if he meant them.

‘You’re so sure? God knows they blame me for … you know.’

‘That wasn’t your fault. Truly. They know that. Even Rennic knows that, even if he won’t acknowledge it. And even if they did take a dislike to you, they need you, remember? We all do. You’re the claim, the rallying pennant. You’re the reason for all this.’

The prince nodded, his laugh a mirthless snort. ‘Now you’re just being mean.’

***

‘Do you think we can outrun Grassi and her kin, Lemon, or any of the hundred other coin-eyed dagger-fuckers that will follow? Without … Without a pathfinder? We need allies, strong allies.’

Rennic’s words were hard, but his tone lacked its customary edge. Lemon sat back down nonetheless. Chel and Tarfel came to a shuffling stop behind her. Chel’s mind kept drifting back, to Rennic’s words, to Whisper, to the Bridge House, to Loveless, to Rasha, to the Andriz enclave. To Laralim’s revelations about his parents, his father. Everything his father had told him had been true, hadn’t it? But it hadn’t been everything. It hadn’t been all-true.

What if his father had been wrong about some things?

Are we doing the right thing?

‘They removed the Nort armada,’ Lemon grumbled, half to herself, ‘those fuck-off floating blocks of black iron, lobbed jets of fire like a teenage boy lobs his relish. Is nobody else just a little perturbed by that?’

‘I’m a little perturbed by your imagery,’ Foss replied, brows pinched as if in pain. ‘And we don’t know that it’s true – Nadej had every reason to lie. Perhaps they simply grew tired of their blockade and sailed home?’

‘Either way,’ Rennic said, his words to Foss but his eyes on Loveless, ‘we cannot count on the Norts for aid.’

Loveless had dropped her gaze to the fire, shaking her head softly. ‘Then there’s only one place left to go.’