If he tried to enter the keep during daylight, he’d jeopardize his mission. What’s more, even if he gained entry into the keep and managed to slaughter the Dedicates, he’d then be forced to return to his king and report . . . what took place between him and Gaborn, and tell why he’d let Sylvarresta live.

Borenson could not stomach the thought. He couldn’t lie to King Orden, pretend he hadn’t seen Gaborn.

So he watched the sun drop in the west, spreading gold all through the clouds, even as another storm blew in.

He fetched his horse and rode to the hill south of Castle Sylvarresta.

I am not death, he told himself, though he had long trained to be a good soldier. He’d become a fine warrior, in every detail. Now he would play the assassin.

An image flashed in his mind, five years past, when Queen Orden was murdered in bed with her newborn babe. Borenson had tried to impale the fellow—a huge man who moved like a serpent, a man in black robes, face covered. But the assassin had escaped.

It hurt terribly to remember such things. It hurt worse to know that he would now go the nameless assassin one better.

As he neared, Borenson saw that few guards walked the walls of Castle Sylvarresta tonight. Sylvarresta’s loyal soldiers had been decimated; Raj Ahten had left no one to guard the empty shell of a city. Borenson could not spot a single man on the walls of the Dedicates’ Keep.

It saddened him. Old friends—Captain Ault, Sir Vonheis, Sir Cheatham—should have been on those walls. But if they lived, now they resided in the Dedicates’ Keep. He remembered three years past, when he’d brought molasses to the hunt and had strewn it in a trail through the woods, leading to Derrow’s feet, then smeared the captain’s boots.

When he’d awakened to find a she-bear licking his feet, Derrow had roused the whole camp with his cry.

Borenson took out the white flask of mist, pulled the stopper, and let the fog begin to flow.

So it was that half an hour later, he laid aside his armor, and went to make a lone escalade. He climbed the Outer Wall on the west side of the city, protected by the fog that crept over with him.

Then he made his way to the inner wall, the King’s Wall, and scampered over quickly. Only a single young man had walked that wall, and he’d turned his back for the moment.

Borenson reached the base of the Dedicates’ Keep near midnight, warily watched it. He did not trust his eyes, worried that guards might be secreted in the King’s towers. So he scaled its wall from the north, coming at it by way of the woods in the tombs, where few prying eyes might spot him.