By the time we left the palace, we’d gathered a grim-faced wake. I felt very small in the center of it as we swept through the city like a cresting wave, bearing down on Leodra’s palace with all the inevitability of the tide. I had set this thing in motion by escaping Leodra’s trap and telling my mother. Now it had swelled far beyond me, and all I could do was bear witness as Leodra’s doom came crashing down on him.

But when we arrived at the sweeping marble steps of Leodra’s grand palace, Ciardha waited for us, shaking her head.

“He’s fled, Contessa. Someone must have warned him. He’s gone.”

La Contessa closed her eyes for a second, mouthing a curse. Then they snapped back open, sharp as ever, conceding nothing. “I want his house searched.”

“Of course, Contessa. It is already in progress. They’ve found this.” She handed my mother an official-looking paper.

I peeked over my mother’s shoulder. Elegant, formal script spelled out a familiar message, marred by one or two corrections. It was unquestionably a draft of the letter the parents of the missing Ardentine children had received commanding them to submit to Raverra’s authority.

“Hell of Discord.” The words slipped out of my mouth all in a breath. “If Ardence learns of this …”

It would justify all the worst suspicions of the Shadow Gentry. I couldn’t blame them for accusing Raverra anymore. No matter what other pieces of the truth we were missing, this letter inked a clear trail.

One of the Council of Nine had been involved in the abduction.

My mother handed the paper back to Ciardha. “We must convene what is left of the Council,” she said. “There is one more judgment to pass today.”

A nonstop whirlwind of activity blew through my house all night and throughout the next day: spies and messengers bearing reports, Ciardha coming and going with her face grim and her eyes shadowed with lack of sleep, and the doge and half the Council calling on La Contessa—during the brief periods when she wasn’t at the Imperial Palace herself.

My mother strongly advised me to stay home until she could be certain Baron Leodra hadn’t left behind any assassins with orders to finish the task Orthys had failed to accomplish. Not long ago, I would have been perfectly content to spend as many days as my mother liked reading in the library or drawing up artifice-project ideas in my room, but now I found it impossible to settle to anything. I paced the library, or stared out the palace windows at the Imperial Canal, and eavesdropped relentlessly on every bit of news I could get about how the revelation of Leodra’s treachery was affecting the situation with Ardence.