My borrowed books sagged in my arms. Of course she did. Never mind that dusk had fallen across the city, the luminaries kindling awake like evening stars. Never mind that I’d hoped to spend an evening relaxing with good books at last, for the first time since putting the jess on Zaira.

“Now?” I asked.

Ciardha nodded, handing me the elixir bottle. “I’m afraid so, Lady.”

“I wish she’d ask me if I had plans before making these pronouncements.” I took a deep swallow of elixir; the piercing taste of anise traced a path down my throat. “She doesn’t need me at that meeting. I could watch and learn some other time.”

Ciardha took the bottle and my books from me and set them on a table, then held out my coat. “Perhaps La Contessa doesn’t need you there, Lady. But others might.”

I paused halfway into the first sleeve. “What do you mean?”

“This is a military-strategy discussion, Lady, regarding how to deploy the Falcons against potential threats to the Empire. I believe Lieutenant Verdi will be there.”

Cold settled in my belly. If my mother wanted me there, they might be talking about deploying my Falcon. “What potential threats?”

Ciardha’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “It isn’t my place to say, Lady. But I think you know.”

The Map Room in the Imperial Palace was aptly named: painted murals of the Serene City and the Empire covered the walls, and even the floor was an inlaid map done in varying shades of marble and precious metals. But the map unrolled on the great table in the center of the room was one of all Eruvia, with colored stones scattered on it for markers. Gathered around the table, casting their shadows across the world from the lamps hanging above, were the doge, the full Council of Nine, a handful of generals and other high military officers, Colonel Vasante of the Falcons, and a very nervous-looking Marcello.

I slipped in beside him, half a step back from his iron-haired colonel, who leaned on the table with both hands. Marcello shot me the look of a drowning swimmer who sees a friend reaching out with an oar to grab.

No one else paid me any attention. Even my mother didn’t lift her narrowed eyes from the map.

“We have the troops to quietly reinforce all the forts in the mountain passes along the Vaskandran border,” the doge was saying. “And we can pull ships from Osta to better position our navy in the north, to attack the Vaskandran coast on both flanks should they be so foolish as to try anything. But we don’t have enough available Falcons to cover the entire border plus Ardence. We need to make some choices.”