“In the course of reviewing the papers your foxes have brought to you,” he said, “have you ever stumbled upon anything that might explain why the Monsean envoy and a Monsean adviser to the queen were trapped in the cabin of their boat, then deliberately drowned?”

Quona turned dark eyes to him that were suddenly worried and serious. “I’m afraid that relates to my reasons for going north today,” she said.

“Seeing as you were gone about five minutes, you can’t have gotten very far north,” said Hava sarcastically.

“You’re right, I didn’t,” she said. “Almost immediately upon leaving, I saw the Cavenda airship, riding the winds north ahead of me. When Benni Cavenda flies north, he goes to his wife’s property in Torla’s Neck. That’s where I was trying to go too. But I can’t very well spy on Benni’s house from my airship if he’s there too, can I? So I shifted course, pretending to be en route somewhere else. As soon as he was out of my sight, I turned back home.”

“So you think Benni Cavenda’s house has something to do with our two drowned men?” said Giddon.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Quona, suddenly frustrated. “But I think Benni himself may have something to do with them, and some house somewhere has something to do with something.”

“How illuminating,” said Hava.

“The silbercows talk to me,” said Quona, ignoring Hava’s sarcasm. “They tell me stories that contain a certain amount of fantasy. But there are always parts that seem real. I can tell when they feel actual distress, for example, and sometimes they show me details I doubt they could know if the image weren’t true. When the silbercows show me things I suspect to be true, I can use my foxes to search for more evidence.

“Lately,” she said, “the silbercows have been showing me some sort of . . . thing that explodes. Some weapon someone is testing, or some terrible toy, some mistake, being thrown from an airship into the sea near a house on a cliff. Silbercows have come to me with burns, crying, not understanding their own injuries. You don’t look surprised, or even particularly moved,” she said, studying their faces.

“Silbercows have shown us the explosions too,” said Giddon.

“They talk to you?” she said, quietly. “They don’t talk to everyone, you know. Have they shown you the sunken boat?”

“Yes,” said Giddon. “With two people trapped inside. That’s what I was talking about: It’s the Seashell, the boat in which our comrades Mikka and Brek were murdered. That’s why we came to Winterkeep in the first place. Not because we’d seen that image,” he added when she looked surprised. “But because we’d started gathering hints that the drowning of our men wasn’t an accident.”