I made my way down timeworn wooden stairs, through the deep, living silence of a house muffled in sleep. I wandered out through the inn’s weedy courtyard and crossed the kitchen garden, under the bright, uncaring stars, surrounded by the scent of rosemary and basil. A chill breeze bent the grasses in a moon-soaked field beyond the low garden wall.

I sat on the wall, staring out at a distant line of cypress trees, and tried to let the diamond-edged starlight into my mind to cleanse it of troubles.

The cold, hard muzzle of a flintlock pistol pressed into my back.

“Not a sound, or I shoot,” Baron Leodra whispered.

Chapter Seventeen

Every muscle in my body went rigid. My hands flicked toward my dagger, then my flare locket, but I’d left both on my bedside table in the inn.

“Don’t move.” Leodra stepped up to stand beside me, where I could see him. The flintlock muzzle hovered a few inches from my chest now. His once-pristine white hair had straw in it, as if he’d been sleeping in a stable, and rough stubble marred his cheeks.

“Listen,” he said with hoarse urgency. “Just listen.”

I held myself still as the wall I sat on, save for the rapid stutter of my pulse. “I’m listening.”

“I’m not a traitor.” The pistol nudged my side, trembling. “I’m loyal to the Empire.”

I tried to convey the essence of respectful attention while my mind ran through various moves Ciardha had showed me for disarming an attacker of their gun. But I wasn’t Ciardha, and I had little confidence I could manage any of them without getting shot.

A spasm of anger crossed Leodra’s face. “Graces curse it, I should just kill you. It would serve Lissandra right. But there are things the doge must know. For Raverra’s sake.”

I caught his wandering gaze. “Did you kidnap the Ardentine heirs?”

“No!” Leodra grimaced in apparent anguish. “I didn’t know they were going to do that. It was supposed to be a ruse to spark the Empire into action, not a real kidnapping. They pulled me into their scheme and played me for a fool, tricking me into putting my seal to those writs and letters without understanding how they’d be used. How they’d be altered.”

“Who?” My fingers curled against the stone wall, scraping on mortar. “Whom did you give the seal to?”

Leodra’s wild eyes narrowed into craftiness. “I want a guarantee of safety first.”

“That’s a strange thing to ask, when you’re pointing a pistol at me.”

“I know your mother too well.” His lips twisted over bared teeth. “She’ll have my head off by dawn if she catches me, unless I have something she needs. And she needs this. Oh, she needs this.”