He closed his mouth firmly and his eyes gleamed and he nodded. “We’re on, Grand Constable. Let’s take care of this situation.”

Tiphaine was cat-quiet as they entered, but everything seemed ordinary enough. The tall windows were dark holes, reflections bouncing off them as the rain streaked across them. The wind made the glass bulge and flex unpredictably. Gaslights hissed all around the lower level, their flames more or less steady. Tiphaine grimaced at the smell. Human and cattle feces produced the biogas. Most of the odor burned away, but unless the gas was expensively scrubbed before use enough escaped to make the building unpleasantly smelly. Fen House didn’t rate scrubbers.

“She didn’t stay drugged, my lady. She came out of the drug trance twice and I forbore to give her more. Medic told me it would kill her. So I strapped her to the bed.”

Stratson hesitated. “Then she started to talk. Her eyes turned black again. That’s when I . . .” The man turned to her, confusion spreading over his face.

“Stanley,” she said softly. He blinked and nodded.

“Dangerous woman. Well, not a woman, I don’t think. But she didn’t stay drugged; and she’s got those black eyes again. I evacuated most of the men. Who could I trust?”

Tiphaine looked up at the prison tier. “Good question, Stanley.”

She remembered a long dispatch from Princess Mathilda, detailing a night of chaos in Des Moines, and the Bossman’s most trusted guards turning on him. Of a man ramming his head through a door, and grinning through mutilated ruin. Of another dying when a High Seeker of the CUT told him his belt was a rattlesnake.

“We’ll just have to trust each other to get through this together,” she said.

She reached down to tug off her right gauntlet and stopped. The owl talisman . . .

Am I imagining that? No. No, I’m not.

She pulled back the gauntlet back on.

Stay armed and armored, then, girl. You Know Who says so. Yes, my lady!

“Right. Stanley, you’re my backup. I’m going in there and dealing with this. If my eyes turn black, you fill me with arrows and burn the body until there isn’t even ash . . . and do the same to that creature of the Ascended Masters, too. Got it?”

The man gave her the kind of look sergeants reserved for recruits and Tiphaine grinned in a way that showed fangs.

“Let’s get this over with!”

She snatched the key ring from Stratson and ran lightly up the narrow stairs. The middle cell felt like a looming cave, with two gas flambeaux waving wildly.

Where’s the draft coming from? she wondered.

She stuck the key in the lock and turned. The gate opened with a grating shriek.

Tiphaine laid a bet with herself. “Lady Mary,” she said, striding over to the cot, shoving the barred door shut. The eyes opened—blue, and filled with anger.