“Lovely to make your acquaintance,” James replied, with a bravado Scratch knew sheltered a trembling unease. “And—not that I’m complaining, of course—but may I ask: why have you sprung us from the dungeons?”

Brella glared at their rescuer. “Iris. You didn’t tell them?”

“We didn’t have time.” In the glowing light of the room, Scratch could see that their escort—Iris—was wearing the dress and apron of a palace maid. She ripped off her bonnet, exposing a head of bedraggled bronze hair.

“They don’t know where we’re going,” Brella spat as Iris flopped onto a moldering sofa. “They haven’t agreed to anything. Damn it, Iris.”

Iris closed her eyes and began to rub the bridge of her nose. “What do they need to agree to? They were going to die, and now they’re not. Now, please, go rescue Frances.”

Scratch choked. “Rescue . . .”

“Listen.” Vel’s voice was calm, but his eyes kept darting to the door and his hands were in fists. “Iris works in the castle. She and Frances are . . .” He bit his lip. “Close. She and the princess overheard some details about an abduction. Frances brought it to Gorn. He didn’t do anything. It seemed like . . .”

“Like he was in on it.” Brella’s jaw was set, her rust-toned eyes fierce. “There was no one the princess could trust in the castle. No one but you two.”

James raked a hand through his hair. “Us?”

Vel nodded. “Unless we get Frances back, you’ll die for this. You didn’t do it.”

“We could have,” James reasoned. “I mean, maybe we knew too much. Maybe they had to kill us to get us out of the—ow!”

Scratch rolled her heel over James’s toes. “We’re not in on it,” she assured the Shaes, tethering herself to reality through the sensation of  James foot underneath hers. Plots? Abductions? Conspiracies? When she finally got the chance to pick this all apart, she would need a very large piece of parchment.

“Yeah,” Brella said. “We know.”

Scratch took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “So where is she?”

The Shaes locked eyes for a moment.

“Koravia,” Vel said, and it was all Scratch could do not to crumble to the floor.

To fight for Ivinscont was to fight against Koravia. That had been the whole point of her recruitment—hells, it was the point of every recruitment. Even if Koravia was not the enemy of the moment, every fighter Scratch felled, every horse she hobbled, was in the name of destroying that nearby nation, those aggressors who had nearly brought Ivinscont to its knees only thirty years before.