In the front of the stable, a boy with dark hair stood by a stall. He’d bridled a force horse—a good one by the number of runes on it—and stood grooming it, preparing it for the saddle. Several horses of equal merit stood by. The lad was too pale of face to be one of Raj Ahten’s own stable-hands, had to have been inherited from Sylvarresta.

The young man turned at the sound of Raj Ahten’s entry, glanced nervously over his shoulder.

“Leave,” Raj Ahten told the boy. “Take the horses to the gates and hold them yourself. Reserve the best for Counselor Feykaald and Chancellor Jureem here—no other. Understand?” Raj Ahten pointed to Jureem, who stood just outside the door, and Jureem nodded curtly at the boy.

The young man nodded, threw a small hunting saddle over the horse’s back, and hurried past Raj Ahten and his counselors, gawking, terrified.

Raj Ahten sometimes had that effect on people. It made him smile. From behind, the boy looked familiar. Yet Raj Ahten suddenly felt a certain muzziness, a cloudiness of thought as he tried to recall. Then he had it—he had seen the boy on the street, earlier this morning.

But no, he now remembered, it had not been the boy. Merely a statue that looked like him. The young man led the horse from the stable, began buckling and cinching the saddle, tying on saddlebags, just out of earshot.

Alone with his Days in the shadowed stable, Raj Ahten whirled and caught the Days by the throat. The man had been following two paces farther back than normal. Perhaps a sign of guilt, perhaps in fear.

“What do you know of this attack at Longmot?” Raj Ahten asked, lifting the Days from the ground. “Who betrayed me?”

“Not, aagh, me!” the Days responded. The man grabbed Raj Ahten’s wrist with both hands, clung for dear life, trying to keep from strangling. Fear lined his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I don’t believe you,” Raj Ahten hissed. “Only you could have betrayed me—you or your kind.”

“No!” the Days gasped. “We, ugh, we take no sides in the affairs of state. This is . . . your affair.”

Raj Ahten looked in his face. The Days seemed terrified.

Raj Ahten held’him, muscles strong as Northern steel, and considered breaking the man’s neck. Perhaps the Days was telling the truth, but he was still dangerous. Raj Ahten longed to crush the fellow, to rid himself of this pest. But if he did, every Days across the world would unite, would reveal Raj Ahten’s secrets to his enemies—the numbers of his armies, the locations of his hidden Dedicates.

Setting the Days down, Raj Ahten growled, “I am watching you.”

“Just as I watch you,” the Days said, rubbing his sore neck.