“The Shadow Gentry,” I breathed. What had Domenic gotten himself into?

Marcello leaned back in his chair, meeting my eyes. “This is terrible.”

Zaira crossed her arms. “That doesn’t mean anything. Gray masks are easy to copy.” By the paleness of her face, she understood the consequences of this attack as well as I did. “These bastards have already tried fake Falconers. This could be a trick, too.”

“I’m not sure the doge will care.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “And I’m not sure it is a trick. If the Shadow Gentry want to start a fight with Raverra, ambushing a Falconer is an effective way to do it.”

“Lieutenant … I’m sorry, sir, but it gets worse.” Lemi’s voice dropped to a whisper, and his face twisted into a grimace of guilt. “They took my pouch.”

Zaira shrugged. “So they robbed you.”

“No. I had …” Lemi closed his eyes. “Graces forgive me, but I believed them, sir. I came prepared for a new vivomancer. I had a jess in that pouch. They took it.”

“Hell of Nightmare,” Marcello swore. “This is bad.”

My stomach plunged down to my boots. That was more than enough provocation for the doge. Jesses were a closely guarded secret of the Empire. The fact that no one else had them was one of the primary keys to Raverra’s power.

“Whoever wants this war,” I whispered, “I think they’re going to get it.”

Marcello made his report to Colonel Vasante over the courier lamps. Usually wonder filled me whenever I thought of the courier-lamp network, relaying flashes of light across hundreds of miles from one lamp crystal to another; but this time, the image of those flickering pulses traveling all the way to the Mews, and from there no doubt to the Imperial Palace, brought me nothing but dread.

A return message came back within an hour: the doge was discussing the matter with the Council of Nine. They would have instructions for us tomorrow.

Our unseen opponents—the “they” Baron Leodra had died before unmasking—had made their move. It was the doge’s turn. But there were a dwindling number of spaces left on the board.

I lay awake a long time in my canopied bed in Ignazio’s town house that night. When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were full of fire.

I stared at the cup of black liquid before me. Coffee again. This was precisely what I needed to make our tense breakfast with the Serene Envoy even more horrible.

It was bad enough to have Ignazio and Lady Terringer in the same room. We’d scheduled this breakfast before coming to Ardence, as an obligatory social visit; now, with the terrible implications of the stolen jess hanging over our heads, the occasion had ascended from mere awkwardness to outright torture.