“I will send more spies to look for Eron. Escape, however…” He shook his head, gaze fixed on the wet ground before his feet. “There is little I can do to actually remove him. Henrick will know if Eron leaves. But if he is sick, as you say, then perhaps some relief can be—”

“I will be going after him myself.”

Leopold stopped. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me perfectly fine, Polly.” She set her jaw. “I will be going after him myself. Just as soon as I have … something.” She did not elaborate what that “something” was, but Leopold didn’t seem to notice. He was fixated on her first words.

“And how do you propose going after him, Safiya?” He sniffed. “Unless I am quite mistaken, even today at Hell-Bard Keep, you could not escape the Loom’s pull for more than several minutes.”

“Ah, so you haven’t noticed then, have you?” Triumph wreathed around her muscles. Purred into her toes. With two hands, she drew down the high neck of her dancing gown.

Leopold’s jaw slackened. “How?” he breathed. Then more forcefully, advancing on her, “Where is the noose?”

“I stowed it in your quarters,” she said matter-of-factly before opening the collar further to reveal quartz and thread and brass, all strung together and resting against the top of her breasts.

It took Leopold several moments to understand what he was looking at. Then suddenly, his head tipped back and he howled at the cavern’s ceiling. A laugh to rattle stones. “Brilliant,” he crowed. “Thrice-damned brilliant, Safiya.” He rushed the final steps to her and stared at the trappings across her chest. “The Truth-lens, yes? Half of your magic was bound to it, so when you became a Hell-Bard, only half of your magic was torn away.” His sea-green eyes met hers, laughter bright within them. “Does it hurt?”

“A little,” she admitted—because it did. A low scratching of cold shivered inside her. It made her want to run. To move. To do anything at all that might distract her from it. “But,” she added truthfully, “it’s not a pain I can’t sustain. As long as I have it on, I still have half my soul with me.”

He chewed his bottom lip. “If you leave, though, you will be going much farther than a few hundred paces. The Solfatarra is on the other side of the Ohrins.”

“I know.” She lifted a single eyebrow. “Which is why I thought we ought to go into the city tonight. See just how far I can travel before the pain becomes too much. If the pain becomes too much.”

“Indeed,” he murmured, a throaty quality to the word. He did not smile, but there was genuine delight in his voice and in his eyes.

He offered her his hands, and once she had them clasped, he helped her rise. “Follow me, Safiya fon Cartorra. I know exactly where we will go.”