I glanced past her to Gala standing with other guardsmen off in the distance, the torches on the outside of the bathhouse illuminating his green face. A grimace twisted his features. Apparently, his “ailment” hadn’t improved.

Iltani tugged her tunic down, exposing more of her cleavage, pasted on a smile, and looked over her shoulder at me with a wink. “I’ll have them eating the nerium directly out of my hand if the brew doesn’t work.”

The jug of sikaru on her hip, she tossed her head and sashayed slowly toward the group of guardsmen who were standing at attention near the entrance.

“Husband!” she cried when she was well away from us.

Gala weakly answered, then gasped and clutched his belly. The men around him laughed.

“I feel bad giving him the nerium. He would have helped us if he’d known what we were up to.” Dagan’s lips were pinched as if in pain.

Taram, Humusi, and I all stared at him with baleful eyes.

“Funny. I don’t feel bad about it at all.”

Not about Gala. But I did about Dagan. His shoulders, always so strong and straight, sagged forward, Shep’s death weighing heavy on them. Even my doubt in him had wounded him deeply. When he smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes. I ached for the ease that he usually carried around. Would he ever get it back? Or would what we’d been through and were still going through haunt him for the rest of his life?

Iltani sauntered up to the guardsmen, hips swaying, shoulders thrown back, a move that had to be costing her. But it was probably a bittersweet moment, since revenge was to be hers if they took the bait. I’d added enough nerium to the jug of sikaru to knock out six men, and since there were only four on guard outside the hidden bathhouse, I figured we’d be safe. Gala attempted to take the jug from her, but he couldn’t lift it, so another guardsman stepped in. She hugged him in thanks, the sign that she was fine and we were to move.

“Let’s go. She’s there,” I whispered, and we crept agonizingly slowly closer to the bathhouse, hidden among the trees. From somewhere above, an owl hooted plaintively as we slunk like dogs, our steps watchful of stepping on a branch. Every soft clank of the Koru’s armor caused us to freeze, panting, nervously awaiting our discovery.

When we arrived a mere hundred or so handsbreadths from the back of the building, we sat on our haunches and waited. I longed to see what Iltani was doing, but she was out of my line of sight. The chirps and chirrs of insects calling to their mates and Iltani’s far-off high-pitched laughter were the only sounds eviscerating the full belly of the night. Stars were scattered over the bits of the jasper sky we could see between the jagged branches of the sycamores.

Iltani’s conversation grew in frivolity, the men hooting and laughing, and we stared at one another in silence, all of us contemplating our own worries.