Simo said, “Deputy Courier, do not overstep your station in life by speaking disrespectfully of those who stand above you. This is the only warning I will give, and that as a courtesy due to the intendant’s connection to Karis Manor.”

He started walking. She hastened to fall in behind him. Xilsi and Jirvy brought up the rear. They took a brisk, ground-eating stride, faster than her normal circuit stride but nothing she couldn’t keep up with for the distance from here to the Spires. Yet what if they did not get there soon enough? What could she even say to convince the prince not to go into the Spires on a moon-bright night?

Maybe she should just let him enter unaware of the danger. What would the haunt do? And would she want the haunt to do it? Yet wouldn’t that make her exactly the same as the masters who had sent out children like her and Aoving ahead of their traveling parties, in order to attract Spore? Years and years ago, Ao had made her promise to never be the kind of person who would use and discard others. Because she refused to lose faith with Aoving, Elen sighed and spoke.

“Captain Simo, it would be both dangerous and foolhardy for the imperial party to enter the Spires once the moon rises. There is an old legend—”

“Silence. It is not your place to advise an exalted prince on matters he has himself studied in the imperial archives.”

She shut her mouth.

After passing the split in the path, they toiled up to the promontory. It was night now, gauzy with moonlight, but the sun was gone and the breeze made her nervous, though it smelled only of late-season flowers and a whiff of hearth-smoke from the hamlet below. The carriages had been forced to halt where the point of land narrowed. About one hundred paces beyond the carriages, the double column of statues lined the ominous causeway.

The beasts had been unhitched and set head-to-tail in a protective fence around the three carriages. The vehicles had been arranged in a triangle, creating a central space within for the party’s encampment. The camp was lit by glass spheres encasing fire spirits, strange and wondrous lights Elen had only ever seen in the company of theurgists.

A menial was examining the beasts one by one, as a groom would care for living animals, making sure they’d taken no harm from the day’s effort. Another menial had crawled under the second carriage, checking its axle. Looking almost like a haunt in the night, a warden paced a circuit beyond the beasts.

No one took any notice of Elen as she slipped between the third and second carriages to get a better look into the camp.