Somehow, the Hammer’s nose wrinkled even more. “You could tell that by looking at my face and hair tails.”

Ryber cracked a smile and dealt another card. The nine of foxes. “You come from the southwesternmost tip, from an island that has mostly managed to evade the wars of the mainland.”

Now the Hammer looked impressed—and even Stix was impressed too. She knew Ryber and the cards were clever, but she’d never seen Ryber play this sort of trick before.

The Hammer’s fingers tapped faster against his knee. Outside, the wheels’ refrain shifted from a soil-soft creak to a stone-echoed clack. Then shadows fell, the breeze vanished, and they were moving beneath the Ring.

Ryber flipped over two more cards. “Lady Fate’s Knife, and … Ah, the Lovers.” She held them up for Stix and the Hammer to see. “You came to Saldonica by sea because your Heart-Thread came here. They were…” She drew a third card, but she didn’t show it. Instead, her eyebrows slanted first into confusion. Then a deeper slope of sadness. “Oh,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. I see your Heart-Thread was—”

“Enough.” The Hammer’s fingers went still, and for the first time since meeting him, Stix spotted a blistering mark around his own thumb. “That is enough.” He shoved from the carriage before it had fully stopped. In seconds, he was gone, vanished into the limestone labyrinth of the Ring.

“What happened to his Heart-Thread?” Stix asked once she and Ryber were out of the carriage as well. “He has a mark on his thumb like mine.”

“Hye,” Ryber sighed as she offered Stix the final card. It was the Paladin of Hawks: a spiral of flames encircling a sword. “His Heart-Thread was taken by raiders, and then Kahina sold them into the Ring. I fear he’s only fighting so he can earn their freedom.”

Stix’s fingers tightened around the card. She scarcely noticed when Ryber pried it from her grasp. “But now I’m going to free them. He should be happy, no?”

Ryber’s lips pursed. “Or maybe you just made it harder for him to fulfill his own bargain, whatever that might be.”

Vivia and the Empress returned to the road sooner than Vivia had intended. She’d gotten turned around in the forest and veered a little too sharply south. She would have returned immediately to the safety of the trees, if not for the cannons.

“Do you hear that?” she asked, venturing onto the road. Midday sun washed over the coastline, making everything overbright. Even with the new growth here, there were still too many bone-bleached trees, too many stretches of dead shoreline.

“The Dalmottis attack,” Vaness said simply.