“She minimized our casualties, at least,” Lord Fox muttered, and I remembered the steps she had taken to prevent the Daanorian soldiers from engaging the Kion army in battle back in Daanoris, the aid to the civilians affected by her invasion.

“Not quite. At the temple of—”

The rest of the conversation was lost as Lady Altaecia guided us into the next room. “Now that we’re all nice and settled,” Lady Altaecia said, “tell me more about her letters. Whatever possessed her to take in a bard, of all people?”

I was wary of relinquishing Lady Tea’s writings, but Lady Altaecia was every inch the authoritarian that the Dark asha had recounted. I handed them over reluctantly, my eyes on her fingers as she rifled through the pages. I was tempted, again, to ask her to skip to the last page, wanting to know the Dark asha’s true ending—but refrained.

Lady Altaecia looked up and chuckled. “I don’t intend to eat them, good sir. Surely you know why I am invested in what she has to say. You may be wondering where the rest of us are. You’ve met Zoya and Shadi. Likh is away, fighting another battle outside of Kion, with all our support. Parmina is expected to arrive in another week. Rahim is somewhere in the city, rallying the people with Chesh. He and the other shopkeepers are coordinating with Alyx’s troops and offering aid to the hardest hit. Have you finished reading these pages?”

“Not all of them, no. Lady Zoya’s control of the ship made it difficult for study. But I read about her meeting with Lord Garindor”—the Drychta nodded in confirmation—“and about your findings in Istera.”

“My king asked her to avenge poor Yarrod’s death,” the old man added dolefully, “little had we known then that it would be many months in the making, with the end still nowhere in sight.”

Lady Altaecia leafed through the sheets. “I didn’t believe her at first,” she murmured. “It was such a fantastic, unvalidated theory, to believe that the elders kept secrets of this magnitude from the rest of us. But Tea proved me wrong, made me trust her. For a time, I even held out hope that she had a motive for this madness. That she had a reason to raise all seven daeva and bind them to her. That she had a reason to travel to Daanoris and upset the kingdom for the price of a Faceless’s heartsglass. She intended to raise shadowglass and take magic from the lands. The elders oppose it for good reason. It is a hard pill to swallow, to go from vaunted silver hearts to the common red, and all their influence gone with it.”