“That’s true.” I glanced at Marcello, but the look he gave me was helpless with anguish. If I left it to him, he’d panic and tell her the cannons would shoot rainbows and everyone would be fine. “The doge wants these weapons here in case Ardence rebels. But it’s more likely than not they won’t. In that case, the cannons might either stay here to protect the city or get moved to the Witchwall Mountains to defend against Vaskandar.”

“I see.” Istrella stared at the diagrams. Her fingers moved as if twisting wire. “I suppose I’ll have to trust the Empire to use them well.”

“I’m sorry, Istrella,” Marcello blurted.

She blinked. “What for?”

“You shouldn’t have to do this.” He waved a hand at the schematics. “This wasn’t what I wanted for you. It isn’t …” He struggled a moment, then said the words. “It isn’t right.”

Istrella shrugged. “It’s an interesting design. It’s better than making yet more courier lamps. The Empire gives me everything I ask for, Marcello. If it wants cannons in return, I can give it cannons.”

The careless acceptance in Istrella’s tone as she pulled tools toward her didn’t make me feel any better. I could tell from the devastation on Marcello’s face he wasn’t reassured, either.

The gates of Ardence stood wide-open, and traffic flowed through the massive brick wall surrounding the city with the casual ease of peacetime. We passed through without any trouble, Ardence admitting the knife the Serene City held to its throat.

Our driver navigated streets wide and crowded with people, merchant lords rubbing elbows with poor wool-dyer apprentices. Raverra’s secret-hoarding alleys and webwork of canals separated out space into guarded islands, a hundred tiny little provinces. Ardence, on the other hand, jumbled everything together in a heady mix of experience and ideas. Coming here to study had been like opening the door of my golden cage and flying out into the world.

We passed the Wishing Fountain; a mother, scolding her children for trying to climb in, sat on the rim where I’d once studied with Venasha. Farther down the street, I glimpsed the statue of The Grace of Victory Defeating the Gorgon, which Domenic had climbed when he was more than a little drunk to put a knitted hat on the gorgon’s head. A while later, we approached the grand columns of the University of Ardence, and the street corner with the bronze bust of the first Bergandon duke, with its usual complement of pasted-on scraps of satirical poetry. That was another thing I loved about Ardence: the riot of art adorning every plaza and crossroads, full of life and motion, capturing a fever of the imagination that struck Ardence a century ago and thrived there in the days of the city’s greatness.